2004 Robot Rodeo results

[George1902]

Awards:
Team Spirit Award: 179, Children of the Swamp
Driving Tomorrow's Technology: 180, S.P.A.M.
Finalists: 233 and 945
Champions: 179 and 1402
Principle's Award: 1065, Tatsu

Recap:
Another Rodeo finished. Where do I begin?

Some things went wrong (field mafunctions; goat on the loose), but good things came of them (teams graciously donating dongles and OI power cables; "The Great Goat Chase").

As a result of our field mishaps, we made one major change to the game: we eliminated autonomous mode. The game was played with the same rules, except that the humans controlled the whole match. This transformed the game! New strategies emmerged. Some teams defended the yellow balls fiercely; others ran straight for the ramp to camp out under the bar.

The elimination rounds were tightly contested. These were the seedings:
1 - 179, 1402
2 - 233, 945
3 - 180, 79
4 - 1369, 1083

In Semifinal 1, 1396 and 179 danced quite a bit while 1402 and 1083 each worked their specialties (hanging and ball collecting, respectively). The first match was hard-fought, but #1 seed won easily after 1369 lost power during the second match.

In both SF2 matches, teams spent most of the first 1:30 jockeying for position around the bar. In both matches, we almost had four robots hanging. In both matches, the #2 seed won by a narrow margin. The crowd was cheering like crazy. After the close matches and pure excitement of SF2, I thought the finals were going to be a let-down.

I was wrong. The first match of the finals had 179 attempting a last-second cap on their mobile goal which came up just short. Each alliance had one robot hanging; the #2 seed had more balls, but the #1 seed had their stationary goal capped. The crowd waited in anticipation, then roared to life when the #1 seed was announced the winner. The second match had much more defense. 1402 was on 945 constantly. 233 tried to to the same to 179. the #1 alliance's defense proved stronger as the took match number two and the championship.

Editorial:
I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did, too.

This was our second straight year of not running autonomous at the Rodeo. I think the games were much better without autonomous. This isn't the place for that discussion, though. I will start another thread on that.

Thank you to everyone for coming!

Oh... I don't want to say too much, but keep a Friday and Saturday in June 2005 open if you can. ;-]