Hi everyone,
I’ve been looking through dome of the historic FTC (and FVC) competitions and I have found, that there is almost always a team that few people were watching in regionals that came out strong in the World Competition. If you want to nominate your team or someone you know as a dark horse, post who and give why.
Edit : They do not necessarily have to be unknown, just not one of the obvious choices
Well, the tricky thing about pointing out dark horse teams is that they wouldn’t be dark horse teams if people noticed them. That and lots of people like to rebuild at the last minute. 
But if you want to try and spot these teams, check the smaller and less-publicized regionals. Look for the rookie teams, and anyone with an unconventional strategy or design. Don’t underestimate them, because (as proved last year) they can be just as good as or better than anybody else.
(Yeah, I’d nominate my team as last year’s dark horse candidate - all-girl rookie team, purely defensive robot, did our best work at a regional with 24 teams attending, ended up being surprisingly effective mostly because nobody saw us coming. Not this year, though.)
Dark horse here:
Raising Corn to the Power of 3, one of the coolest robots I’ve seen all year and whoever ends up paired with Power Surge. I’m fairly certain that they could win Atlanta with two non functioning alliance partners.
Hello Longhorn Robotics! We practised with you in Calgary a couple times, good luck in Atlanta! We won’t be seeing you there, we had some malfunctions in the Finals at our tournament, but hopefully we can keep the connection next year 
On topic: 54 did very well in Idaho, they might not be as fast as Power Surge, but they could consistently get all 4 racks in the triangle in the first minute despite heavy defending from both opponents.
They aren’t in the atlanta list 
3033 - I’d like to see a picture of this arm system? Please!?!?!
Raising Corn to the Power 3 is a very good team with a very good robot, but I would guess by recognizing them, it would defeat the purpose of a dark horse.
Now we’re just picking favorites. :D.
Sure just pick favorites if you want, just don’t pick the obvious teams (cough PowerSurge cough), we all know who the obvious favorites are.
http://upurs.us/image/5362.jpeg
It looks like your standard parallel arm, but it is far more capable.
EDIT: I chose a low quality picture on purpose, for secrecy reasons.
Very cool!
PS Are those sound sensors?
Out of all honestly, world is two days away. You won’t really be giving anything away.
Powersurge is a dominant and no doubt a MAJOR shoe in to win it all.
Thats a shame. And I -think- that means there will be no teams from the Idaho championship there.