As almost every FIRSTer from New England knows, Aces High holds an annual pre-ship scrimmage for teams to test out their robots on an actual FIRST field. Today was their “Winter War Zone” scrimmage, and over 32 teams registered to take part in the competition. FIRST provided an official field and game elements (I have never seen so many inner tubes in one place in my life), as well as referees and technicians from IFI to test out the new game, scoring system, and radios.
After a morning of practice matches, each team had a chance to play in three qualifying matches. A large number of teams were able to pick up and score ringers, but less had functional ramps. Following these qualifiers, the top 4 seeded teams picked alliance parters, and best of three eliminations were played, and the not-quite-done robots played some competitive “Rack N’ Roll”. The highlights of the day were Team 230 scoring a keeper during autonomous mode using their vacuum scoring system, and team 1099 lifting two robots off the ground for a 60 point bonus. If all the teams there today use the few days left before ship to really polish up their robots, then we’re in for an exciting season!
The primary video of our coverage is a “highlight reel” showing off robots in action. Also, you can find links to the elimination matches (no quarterfinals were played since it was only top 4, and our camera battery died, resulting in incomplete video of the finals. Go to The Blue Alliance to watch these videos!
Excellent video and music! Great getting a peak at other teams’ robots in action. Definately looks like effective ramp or lifter bots will be in demand.
Thanks for the videos. Question, what’s up with the slow-mo voices? I downloaded the AVIs and the guy talking and the music don’t match the video. The people and robots seem to be moving at normal speed.
If you want it, the link for download from the FIRST site is down, but I have both of them just send me a PM.
And if anyone tries to pull the whole “RIAA copyright” card on me I will state that it was available for download free at one time, and can thus be freely distributed in the future.
To get them onto your iPod, when you download the song just click and drag it into the main iTunes window when your iPod is connected. (You may have to click the Sync button to download it.)
And yes, I have written permission from FIRST to host these songs.
I have fixed the audio encoding issues with the final matches. They should all now have audio playing at proper speeds (and are slightly smaller, to boot!)
As usual, an awesome Blue Alliance episode, even if it were only a recap. It would be really nice to have some of you or Tom’s commentary about the level of play at a competition.
I hope sometime in the future you guys can do some kind of coverage maybe with a desk, Sportscenter styled, next to the field at a regional, and in New England during week 3 maybe…?
I’ll say this: as a team that didn’t have the manpower to build a rack, TBA saved our butts. By showing how tubes and end effectors worked in the game, we were able to make a lot of decisions that would’ve taken a lot longer without that footage. We actually sort of have a robot that can score on this thing!
