The Chairman’s team did extremely well in front of the judges. They had an amazing speech and answered all questions correctly and efficiently. The members that participated in the speech group learned a lot about presenting data in a workforce setting. The judges expressed we did an outstanding job during our presentation.
We spent the week after the competition improving our practice robot and Chairman’s speech in preparation for the our next competition, which was in Springfield on March 23rd. We made a lot of changes and had plenty of time to practice, as well as making a strong plan for the competition. What we have learned and added to the practice bot was applied to our competition bot during unbag time prior to the Springfield competition.
One of our most committed members made a really great scouting sheet for the team to use at competitions this year. It has worked better than any of our previous years and is extremely innovative. The sheet is a bubble-format that works similarly to an SAT test. The reason for this is so that we can easily and flawlessly scan the data and instantly transfer it to the computer, allowing access to our drive team. Scouting is very important because it tells us what teams we would work well with in a potential alliance during the finals. We collect it several different ways: in the stands watching the matches (most common), in the pits talking to teams individually, and through the drive team’s personal opinions.
Once we came back to AGR after competition, we unpacked our trailer and held a team meeting to discuss the how the competition went and how it can be better executed. We talked about what went well and what didn’t, in addition to how we could fix these problems and make things better. All of our members were able to contribute to making solutions to our problems and mistakes.
Between competitions, we have been practicing a lot with our practice bot as we prepared for our next competition. After discussing the problems that we had, a prototype was created and a design implemented these were put on the competition during unbag time. Our Awards committee had also spent the week prior practicing and revising our speech in preparation.
This past weekend, we had our competition in Springfield, Massachusetts. At this competition, we performed very well and had a high ranking (much higher than in Waterbury). By the end of the qualifiers, we were ranked 7th out of 31 teams. We were picked by the 3rd alliance in the alliance selection and, by the end of the whole competition, we ended at 2nd place!
Our team was allianced with the 2nd Law Enforcers, team 178, in addition to 7869, a rookie team! We were very proud to be working with a rookie team and helping them reach the finals. This weekend, 178 will be visiting our home, AGR, to practice with us.
Our drive team performed very well at the Springfield competition. With our scouting data, we had an 88% match prediction accuracy. The scouting data is used by our driveteam to strategize before matches.
Currently, we are ranked 37 in the New England FRC teams. We have a chance to make it to District Championships, but we won’t know for a couple weeks as competitions go on and ranks change. We will be sending updates about it as soon as possible!
This week, we’ve been updating and adding changes to our robot. The robot has been through a lot as we’ve been testing and changing it. We added a mechanism to our robot so that it has the ability to climb up to level #3 in the habitat. It has small wheels that come out of the bottom on “stilts” made out of medal and it uses the hand grabber to climb straight up.
Our Chairman’s interview group once again performed amazingly. This is really helping them prepare for their future in job interviews and presentations. Though we did not win the award, we still learned a lot and are going to continue improving and getting better.
Additionally, over this past week, we have been coming up with ideas for community service. We want to expand our services to spread the message of STEM further throughout. Inspiring kids to be involved in technology is one of our largest passions and our mission.
Over the past few weeks our team has learned a lot. We have had our two qualifier competitions. We brought home 2nd place at the Springfield, MA event. Our team has gotten together to discuss over several meetings and talk about how we can improve.
No matter what happens this year, we’ve made it to Deep Space!