It’s been a week since Glacier Peak, and while competition season is as busy as ever, I wanted to take a moment to look back at my team’s experience during that event. I am on team 8248, and if you were at Glacier Peak with us you might have noticed that we were having some difficulties with our wheels during the competition. Basically, this season we decided to switch to swerve and purchased the REV MaxSwerve modules, and partway through the first day of competition the wheels had completely delaminated and were unusable. We only had one replacement, so we weren’t able to participate in the next couple of matches after that while we worked on finding a solution. Although the situation was unfortunate, it was amazing to see how much support we got from everyone at the competition - there were so many teams and robot inspectors that helped us out. I wasn’t in the pit the full time we were trying to fix it, but I’ve gathered a list of everyone I and the other people on my team remember helping us out:
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2412 designed and gave us 3D-printed replacement wheels! They went through an extraordinary amount of effort to design and deliver the wheels on such short notice, and I am truly amazed. Details can be found in this post.
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2910’s mentor Freya was in our pit for a long time helping us find a solution and helped us test the traction on the practice field.
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2046, who wasn’t even at the event but drove out to Glacier Peak anyway to give us some replacement wheels they had.
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4980, which let us take some of the wheels they had and use them to make an improvised solution
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Mentors from 4089 and 488
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A huge number of robot inspectors, including Kate (a lead robot inspector), who contacted Greg Needel (the CEO of REV), who almost ended up flying out from Texas to give us replacement wheels!
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Most teams at the event also offered help in the form of tools or an extra set of hands
Overall, I’m overwhelmed by the amount of support our team received last weekend, and I’m so grateful to every team and person who helped us out. I am so glad we have built a culture of gracious professionalism that makes teams so eager to support one another, and it was clear how much every person who stopped by our pit wanted to see us succeed. Thanks again to everyone who helped, and we’re so excited to see some of you at our next competition!