As the robots slow and the days move by, it’s not hard to see that we have reached the end of this year of robotics comps. But don’t worry, this is to be celebrated. It was a good year and one full of many ups and downs. So, let’s step back and look at the whole year in summary.
We started the year on Jan 6th there in our school posted on the large projected screen we saw the challenge for the first time. The next two days were hectic. We were running around trying to design, make, and then test as many different ideas as we could. My main job was running the laser cutter, even though Namit would disagree with that. In those two days we had more or less created the idea of what we wanted for the robot. Even creating what we call Crayola CAD or a basic blocky version of what the robot would look like, this was actually new to us. Matthew S was the one to bring in the idea.
After that, we went into about a week and a half of more testing. Now that we knew what we wanted, we wanted to find out how to perfect it. We wanted to do this a bit faster than we had done last year, because we spent way too long last time. This time, we made 12+ prototypes which was a good improvement. We also started to work on some final designs as time went on.
After the prototyping week we worked as fast as we could to get the design finalized. We had many team meetings to look at designs that we had made that week. There were a lot of little tweaks and mini jobs, but we did get it done.
The next ~three weeks were fully under the control of the rest of the team Design had done its job. Fab would make the parts, Assembly would put it together, Electronics would wire everything, and then Programing would make the final touches and have it move. After that there were a lot of small changes and as we had the time, and the robot would never be perfect. but our time had come comp season was upon us.
Our first FIRST comp was at OSF, or the Oregon state fair. It was the first time since I joined that our first comp wasn’t at Wilsonville. The change in scenery was a nice change of pace. It was fun to start competition but It was far from a smooth ride. We made our way through and got picked to be on the first alliance by SERT the captain and we went on to win at that comp. The Pits, or where we work on the robot had its first debut at this comp as well. We had worked on it over the summer. It looked a lot better than our old one, along with other teams it was cool to walk through and see the hard work that had gone into each and every robot.
After OSF we went to Boney Lake, a little closer to home than OSF but still as fun. Our robot did great and this time we came out in first, getting to be the captain of the first alliance. We would also go on to win this comp, and win it well. This was the last comp that would count for district points or the points that say if we move to the next stage, but we were not done yet.
After Boney, we made our way to Sammamish for a third comp. We liked to go to a third because it gives more practice for our main team and even sometimes for the backup drive team, finally getting their try. This comp was great. We made our way through a little rocky, but we stayed up there finishing in second. Making our way through playoffs, fought hard and, with no losses, beat the first alliance and took the trophy. Though at this comp, one of the most interesting things was seeing that the eighth alliance made it quite far and for FIRST that was really surprising.
After regionals, things got serious only the top ~50 teams in our area got to go to districts and we were one of them, near the top for that matter. And even with a hard fight ahead, we were ready. Making our way through quals didn’t look good at times, sometimes even getting down to the high 20’s but in a series of very lucky events we ran our way up in the last few matches ending in first place. That was the best thing at that whole comp. After alliance selection and lunch, we felt as if we would steamroll everyone. That was not the case in our first match against the eighth alliance, arguably the worst alliance. They beat us, knocking us to the loser’s bracket. we won our next one but after that we got knocked out. The first alliance, arguably the best alliance, just got destroyed. Not a great feeling, I can say that for sure. Matthew Smith felt the same saying that “we could’ve totally won it, had we not broken at the same time as jack had issues.” But we did make it far enough so that we were one of the ~12 teams that would go to Houston from the PNW, we were scared but we were ready.
Houston was the final comp of the main season and the favorite of most of the team. This is where the best of the best come the top 5.5%, 600 of the best teams come to see who will be on top, and we were one. The comp was tough, and we had to struggle for every place, lasting two days of quals and a day of finals. It is one of the longest comps even lasting (at least for us) from 5:00 am to 6:00+ pm. That was only for the comp. After, we had many other responsibilities to take care of after. In the end, we were lower than we wanted but we made it the 8th alliance just barely a guaranteed finals spot, and we didn’t want to waste it. We lost our first match but against the 1st alliance. That was to be expected, but then we won our second, and the next, making our way to the quarter finals where by some twist of fate was the 1st alliance. They had been knocked down to the losers bracket and were not ready to lose. We went in with some fear, but we were ready and it was amazing for the first match. You would have thought that we were different teams. We blew them out of the water and were able to move forward. But, the semifinals were the last for us. This was surprising based on the match that we had before, but it was a good run. We made it very far and there was a lot to be proud of. Matthew Smith and Lucas Lovrien felt really good because “we stomped last year’s world champs in the same division as last year.” He feels quite good about that. We won six engineering awards throughout the season, made an amazing tech doc, and made crazy improvements. But now, the season is over.
In the past week we have started working on smaller projects that we can improve.
What training we want to work on, where we could be better, and so forth but for now we were ready for a break, some time to move forward and get ready for the next year.
I hope this was helpful, or at least interesting and that you will join us next year and the crazy ride ahead of us. 🙂
