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News - '08 FRC Season in a Nutshell

	Posted by Kevin Forbes (admin) on Sun Apr 06, 2008 at 7:43 pm
	News >> Competitions

I know this update is a little late. We've been tired from the regionals and whatnot (or that's the excuse, anyway). However, here is the long awaited 2008 FRC Season update, starting with the Arizona regional:

We arrived at our hotel early Wednesday night, hoping for a successful regional. Our hopes were only partially met. On Thursday, the robot performed to our expectations, and since our drivers (Sean Topping and Josh Beaver) were still getting the used to the field we had time to locate and fix several problems throughout the day. When Friday crawled along, we started to realize that several big issues might cost us the regional. For one, the robot would stop near the end of the match, apparently helpless. We found this to be a very nasty electrical problem after the regional, but we definitely learned some important lessons from the wiring alone. We also noticed that our ability to pick up the ball was hindered by traffic jams and a less than mediocre method or obtaining said trackballs. These two main issues essentially destroyed our chances of succeeding at the regional, but we did learn many valuable lessons that would help us at Los Angeles. We were given our only award Friday night, the Autodesk Visualization Award for the outstanding animation our animation team created. Saturday afternoon we crated the robot and left for home.

A week later, the team readied itself for Los Angeles. This time, we were prepared for the issues that plagued us throughout the regional, and we didn't let them take control. The day before the regional the team shot some breeze at Six Flags Magic Mountain, which helped alleviate some of the stress. We promply fixed the big problems from Arizona, locating the faulty wire and adding herding side-arms to the lifter. Both of these fixes greatly enhanced our turnout at the Los Angeles regional, and we managed to take the semi-finals once more in a more diverse group of opponents. Along with our take in the eliminations, we received the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control award for our simplistic approach to the controls end of the robot. Once again, we crated our robot and headed home.

Although our experience robot-wise at the regionals wasn't as great as expected, we did learn many crucial things about robot construction in general. We also debuted our Nintendo DS Scouting System, which was an instant success at the Arizona regional and only improved at LA. As far as FRC goes, we plan on returning next year in full force with the combined experience of 3 years under our belts.

The FIRST Robotics Competition is not the only thing we've been concerned about lately. The National Underwater Robot Challenge, hosted by our mentoring team Carl Hayden (FRC 842), is now underway, and a small sub-team of NERDS planning on the first meeting tomorrow, April 7th. This team will begin brainstorming and plans for this year's challenge, which you can learn more about at http://www.h2orobots.org. A new website for documenting our involvment in this competition is located at http://www.project1726.org/nurc.

The team is also starting to reach out to the community about robotics through the elementary and middle schools, teaching young students about robotics in Cochise County. Several robots are scheduled to appear at the Cox Communications movie night at the Veterans Memorial Park in June.

Three small, final updates: the annual vEx Camps, held at Buena High School, are in works. Plans are currently being made, more information to follow. Also, a team meeting is scheduled for this Wednesday, April 9th, during which we will vote on our new officers. The end of year banquet will also be brought up at this meeting.

We, the students, would like to thank the teachers, parents, sponsors, mentors, and community for their combined support during the last several months! Nothing would have happened without every one of you, and we wholeheartedly THANK YOU!

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