So, now that the 2008-2009 championship of FTC is over, what are your thoughts? What did you like or dislike about the way things were run this year? How could things be improved? How did things go for your team?
We were plagued by a string of bad luck all competition; rough handling by TSA meant that we spent all of Wednesday replacing bent axles instead of practicing our robot and fine-tuning code. We had several unlucky part failures and connection issues. The entire time our robot performance was pretty sub-standard, as a mechanism which worked perfectly at Los Angeles failed to get a single puck into our robot at Atlanta. We weren’t picked for the finals, we didn’t win any awards…
…and we still had a blast just being there and cheering our hearts out for our friends, our division winners, and all the award winners. We don’t regret anything.
i think they should run it more like frc. like in the finals for our division team 110 lost connection with there robot and just sat there all match. if that happened in frc they would have replayed the whole match. that problem happened to many matches through out the day and its something that def. needs to get changed.
Many matches had numerous connection failures. Our robot dropped connection with the central FMS after we could not link with our laptop and as a result we lost huge potentials for ranking points. There was also an undeniable static problem due to the carpeted floor, and the fields were completely dilapidated by finals matches, severely compromising our autonomous periods - there was a two inch gap of red carpet between the border and the gray mats!
I find that it’s a constant between all of the competitions that the connection issues were the worst part of this season, and I admit that for my team as well.
I think the game was interesting, the kit could use a little bit more work, and the events were as fun as ever.
I do not understand why there were only 4 alliance captains. Can anyone explain?
Our team doubled their average regional score, match per match, yet still was getting beat by a couple of points. This just shows the calibre of teams that were there!
I saw the refs re-run a match due to connection problems exactly once: when our entire alliance lost our connection right at the beginning of autonomous. And it was only because the other alliance begged the refs to re-play it. That should have been the standard, not the exception. (And we did send a letter to the judges praising those two teams because they didn’t have to do that at all.)
Also, next year they should a)bring back eight alliances per division and b) institute an FRC-style serpentine draft. It would make things much more fair and interesting.
FTC teams are becoming more and more advance with experience. I am looking forward to seeing what teams will be capable of next year after having a summer to do pet projects and after new Tetrix goodies will be released. The caliber of Engineering Notebooks and FTC Team outreaches are starting to shine.
Huge congrats to team 32, Einstein’s Daughters for their Inspiration Award. I believe they could have won the Chairman’s award at quite a few FRC regionals with everything they have done.
