Friday – March 6
On Friday we were planning on quickly getting inspected, tuning our limelight on the field, and driving all day long in practice matches. As we would normally expect of any robotics team, the plan quickly flew out the window. We spent some time initially drilling out the bushings on the other side of the climber in order to make sure that there was minimal friction and that it would run smoothly.
At the same time, electrical was able to fix the issue with the compressor not shutting off when it reached full pressure. However, we continuously met pneumatic leak problems and most of the day was spent trying to fix them. We went to the field for limelight calibration but had to cut that short in order to get back to our pit for inspection. We were inspected in a timely manner but were not able to return on time to the field for calibration. As a result of us not having a cable for our network switch, we were not able to access our limelight feed outside the field and, therefore, not able to tune and work on its calibration despite getting threshold values from another team. Nevertheless, we were able to – in between our fixing of the pneumatic issues – play 4 practice matches during the day. We climbed in two of those matches. Every time we attempted to climb, we climbed successfully. We were able to learn ways to play the game and also get adjusted to playing on an actual field.
Saturday – March 7
Qualification matches started and from the second we saw them, we knew our hardest ones were towards the end. At first, we had some intake problems and some climbing timing issues, but we were overall able to score decently and climb relatively quickly and reliably. However, things started to slowly go downhill. Our macros for shooting seemed to slowly drift upwards during the day and – as a result – our accuracy decreased significantly as we missed more and more balls. Nevertheless, we finished our second to last match on Friday ranked number 1. Our final match on Friday (our match against 3255 SuperNURDS who would go on to win the regional) we knew from the beginning would be hard. But, due to our inconsistent shooting and some stubborn alliance partners during the endgame period, we were neither able to score balls well nor able to get a double climb. As a result, we ended up losing the match and significantly dropping in ranking.
Sunday – March 8
With some valuable lessons in mind from Saturday, we were able to tune our macros a bit and improve the shooting accuracy by a considerable amount. Our first match on Sunday was the most balls we’ve put in a match. At this point in time, we had also gotten to the point where our ball intaking speed was vastly improved from the start of the regional. We quickly won our first two matches but, as with the match against SuperNURDS, we knew our last one would be the hardest. We faced off against 294 (who ended up being the first seeded team) and nearly edged out over them. Due to a control error and our controls to the drivetrain cutting out in the last second, we were unable to climb and therefore lost the match.
Nevertheless, we were ranked 5th and after talking to some other teams decided we would want to be in an alliance with 4698 Raider Robotics and 6695 Alpha Knights. After alliance selections we got together to discuss our strategy for the playoffs. Everything seemed sound and things looked like they were headed in the right direction. However, as soon as the match started, our shooting accuracy decided to just abandon us. Paired with excellent defense from the opposing alliance and some inconsistency and lack of speed on our part, we were not only able to score a lot less balls but also failed to climb due to a misalignment error. The second match was much improved (since we decided to shoot up against the wall and not rely on trench shots) but, due to the opposing alliance’s triple climb and our lack of one, they edged out and took the win.
It is important to note that in our last thirty seconds of the second quarterfinal match, our lead screw for the tube adjustment mechanism snapped. So, even if we had won, it is very unlikely that we would have been able to fix the issue in time for the next match.
We quickly made sure everything was ready to bring back to RB for load-out and we sat down to watch an exciting semifinal and final round of playoffs.
We sat around for the award ceremony just in case – as we always do – and the hard work seemed to finally pay off. We won our first ever award (if you don’t count winning a regional in 2018) at a regional. The quality award was given to us for exceptional thought put into the robot on behalf of our designers and for the consistency of performance we had during competition. This year we really nailed the quality and most of the time (after the pneumatic and elevator problems were fixed) between matches was spent just on checking stuff on the robot and software coding some additional features. Mechanically and electrically this is the most sound robot we’ve ever made and the quality award reflects that very well.
Overall, we performed well at the regional and were able to accomplish many of the goals we set out to achieve. There are many areas – particularly shooting accuracy and consistency – in which we can improve and in which we plan to greatly improve for the SD regional.
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