Our game plan for this season was to climb and make points that way, however control issues meant that our servos for raising and lowering the climbing arms on our robot were not working properly. In digging deeply we found that the Android Code does not support Continuous Rotation (CR) servos and we had invested in high torque, all metal gear, CR servos to raise and lower our climbing arms. The Power Distribution Module failures that everyone has talked about took time for us to address and the servo issue did not get addressed prior to the competition. So, we had to back-up, review our situation, and come up with a different game plan. Our robot can drop the climbers into the rescue area fairly consistently and we knew that we could extend our climbing arms and activate the zip line from the floor consistently. In looking at the other teams as they competed we realized that the scores were between 0 and 50 in the matches and getting 40 points for those two activities could be competitive. We also added plexiglass sides to allow us to sweep debris into the floor area (our Mecanum wheels made that much easier due to their being omni-directional).
Inspire-inators (10231) from Americus graciously asked us to be their partners in the semi-finals as the 3rd place alliance. The semi-finals were very unusual at this qualifier because the 4th place alliance defeated the 1st place alliance and we defeated the 2nd place alliance. IN the finals it was the 3rd place alliance vs. the 4th place alliance. We consistently got our climbers into the rescue area and activated the zip line during the finals. At the end the scores were close but the 4th place alliance defeated us to take the win for the day. It was a great experience and we learned that getting too attached to a game plan that is not working can be a huge problem. Being flexible, learning from your own mistakes and the successes of the other teams, and staying focused on the game is a challenge but makes the experience a whole lot better.The qualifier was the first experience driving and cooperating with an alliance partner in competition for our new field team. The first few matches were challenging and coordination suffered. We went back to the pit area, evaluated our performance, had some tough discussions, talked with our future alliance partners, and tried to regroup to better work as a teammate with our partners. At the end of the qualifier matches we were in 8th place but our coordination and the fact that we were one of the only teams getting climbers into the rescue area and releasing the zip line consistently meant that the scores were solid.
The Think award is given to the team that best reflects the "journey" the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season. The engineering notebook is the key reference for judges to help identify the most deserving team. The Team’s engineering notebook should focus on the design and build stage of the team’s robot. Journal entries of interest to judges for this award will include those describing the steps, brainstorms, designs, re-designs, successes, and those ‘interesting moments’ when things weren’t going as planned. A team is not be a candidate for this award if they have not completed the section of the engineering notebook describing the team’s experience.
Jordan, Max, Kate, and JP
at Douglas Co Qualifier
We'd like to also congratulate our friend - Amanda Pham - for being a referee for her first qualifier! She and her team, GENIUS 5875, have always been incredibly supportive and gracious in offering us help and support. We were so happy to see Amanda getting to referee at Douglas County!
Our field team is new this year with Kate and Max driving (their first year on FTC) and Jordan as the field coach (he's always been a builder but wanted to have field experience this year). JP was very busy during the qualifier helping several other teams with their programming. We shared our code with four other teams during the match. JP helped LED 7437 with their code on and off all day. We also helped - 7377 download App Inventor to their computer, install it on their phones, and get their robot running after they had traveled all the way from Americus for the qualifier. We were so happy to see their robot competing and they won the Motivate Award for the day too!
At the end of the day, we got to reconnect with some old friends, make new friends, learn a lot about the challenge and take much home to think about. We were in the Finalist Alliance and that was thrilling. The judges awarded us the Think Award!
Douglas County High School Qualifier
On November 21st Rockin' Robots participated in
the first qualifier for Georgia's RES-Q FTC Season
at Douglas County High School.
Suggestions for Upcoming Match Qualifiers
From our match on Saturday we can tell you several things that may help:
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Everyone tried to climb but no one was really successful and there were MANY robots on their backs like turtles,
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No one, and I mean no one, had a working autonomous,
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Points in matches ranged from 0 for an alliance to 83 with 50+ points winning more than 2/3s of the matches (these are extremely low scores),
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Nearly no one was putting the men into the beacon shelter during the match (20pts) nor were they pushing the lever for the 1st zip line slider (20pts) - those two alone would have won ~50% of the matches, and are why we did as well as we did on Saturday,
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Only 1 team could put debris into the lower bucket on the ramp and they could do nothing else consistently but were 2nd in points during the qualifier matches,
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Many teams did not even bother to turn in a notebook, but it is required for many of the awards,
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Phone battery endurance was a challenge - having a portable high amp USB charger to charge while waiting in the queuing area would help.