PNW Trial Day Today

[Rick TYler]

Today was the test day for Seattle area teams. Six robots showed up out of ten teams in the area, and had a lot of fun plus pizza and cookies. The Titan Robotics Club (#492) sponsored the event and I am EXTREMELY grateful to their volunteers. We had a full-sized tournament area complete with pits with tables, carpet and wooden barriers.

I won't comment on the robots much except to say that they are all ready, or at least this close to being ready, for the Portland tournament, and that "Wooden Thunder" from Team 1294 was lookin' good. I also might note that the only broken wooden component today was not from our 'bot. Our condolences go to the team from Sealth High who had a tetra bracing thing snap, and props because they had a new one installed in about 20 minutes.

The engineering level in our little sample of the PNW tournament was very impressive. We had a pneumatic grabber, a spinning tower, a scary tetra spiker, a slightly-less-scary spiker, and a couple of forklift-style 'bots. I can't wait to see what the other 35 teams have built. Unfortunately, no one had a holomonic drive or omnidirectional wheels.

[Madison]

I, along with most of my team, stopped by today for about 45 minutes to check on what was going on and catch a glimpse of the area teams and their robots. We left our robot back at the shop because we'd rather finalize it there with the proper tools on hand than worry about it offsite. Also, it's not finished yet

I was happy with what I saw and my expectations of the event were pretty accurate. I am looking forward to seeing how team's improve in the next several days when we compete down in Portland.

[russell]

Six out of the ten teams have finished robots? Wow. We came into our shop today with pieces of an arm laying around, and a chassis, and left twelve hours later with an almost finished robot. Cant wait to see these bots in Portland.