Frantic Friday

Our day got off to an exciting start when we received our match schedules and realized we were up for the first match! Immediately, the crew got working on preparing Serenity for her first big game.

However, the first match was somewhat disappointing. The dustbin snapped off once again (although another team lost an entire bumper, so by comparison it wasn't that bad), and although we did some mediocre defending, by the end of the match Serenity somewhat spiraled out of control, incurring dozens of points of technical fouls. Furthermore, we forgot to unload some Frisbees from Serenity's chute. However, we were visited by three very friendly judges, and three scouts from Team 931 (Perpetual Chaos), and talked to each for a while about our robot. Captain Grace assigned Addy and Paul to watch from the stands and take notes on teams we were to be either paired with or against in the course of the competition.

Our next match was #15, around 10:40 in the morning. This one was a disaster. Someone forgot to remove the wooden plank lodging Serenity's arm in the upright position before the match. The drivers didn't realize this and kept trying to move the arm, which eventually broke the fasteners allowing it to move. Consequently, we didn't do much of anything. Henry made a valiant effort to score some human points, but it's awfully difficult to aim across the field. The wooden plank was removed and exiled to a corner of the pit, but there were still bugs to fix. The worst part was that we were scheduled for Match 18, meaning that any repairs had to be made in the queue line! 

In a few minutes, we competed again. Serenity still hadn't been completely patched up, but she did some decent defense agains Team 4331. However, we were allied with Teams 4330 (Rambunction, from Ladue) and 4154 (Perpetual Recursion), the latter of which was outstanding and carried our alliance to victory. We returned to the pit and leapt into action repairing Serenity, while Captain Grace talked with a scout. Our next match wasn't until after lunch, so we had ample time to repair those screws -- a task that might necessitate removing the entire arm!

While Walter, Christine, and Mike worked dutifully on the arm, the rest of us headed outside to enjoy glorious summer-like weather, eat Subway (provided by Mrs. Sechrist), and play an AWESOME game of Frisbee. The builders joined us for the last half of lunchtime, and then it came time to reenter the pit and prepare Serenity for a match in thirty minutes.

In our next match, we were allied with Team 1288 R.A.V.E.N. Robotics, one of the best shooters in the competition and at that time ranked #1. Victory was guaranteed. As for Serenity, she defended rather zealously, becoming locked up with Team 1706's robot for some time. Tension was high as everyone waited for 1706, perched at an awkward angle, to topple to the ground -- and the drivers stressed over losing connection to Serenity. However, after a few awkward moments, our opponent freed itself, bumping Serenity against our pyramid and incurring a technical foul. After that, noting that there was no way for our opposing alliance to make a comeback, Serenity retreated to a corner to let 1288 do their thing. Another win for 3397! We returned to the pit to inspect Serenity and make sure her close call with 1706 hadn't damaged anything.

The next match wasn't very exciting, since our two alliance partners built specialized climbing robots. Serenity ran about and blocked a few opponents. Our points were guaranteed by the climbers, but an opponent robot also bumped into the climbers twice, incurring 40 points of technical fouls that only cemented our third victory.

About an hour later, we returned to the field for another match. It's worth noting that our autonomous period had been faltering in every match until now. Dan and Josh anticipated trying out their new autonomous code on this match. However, she unfortunately turned in the wrong direction, so it seemed some changes still needed to be made. Furthermore, it seemed the new battery we'd put in was less than optimal: Serenity was sluggish and eventually stalled out about halfway through the match. Our opposing alliance included the 1985 Robohawks, our friends and rivals, who scored enough to wallop our team. Looked like our winning streak was broken.

Although autonomous goofed up again, in our next match we actually scored points, disgorging a few Frisbees into the 1-point goal. Unfortunately, we also bumped up against an opponent robot at its feeder station; and more worryingly, a corner of our arm shield broke off during a tussle with the Army Ants' robot. Also, our alliance was thoroughly trounced -- but the important thing is, we scored points! That's a victory in our book, even if Henry disagrees.

In our final match of the day, Serenity defended her best yet. The problem was that our alliance mates were not optimized for scoring, so all our awesome defending didn't mean much. Really, that was the problem with most of our bungled matches: simply not having any synergy with our alliance mates.

Well, with our matches for the day done, we migrated to the stands to watch the final few matches and the awards ceremony. Walter, Henry, and I danced with the Cavaliers before hanging out with the CyborgCats for a time.

All things considered, today was a pretty great day for the team. We fixed all the problems that came up, and marketed ourselves to higher-up teams. We didn't get a chance to do what Serenity was built for -- feeding teammates -- but there's always tomorrow. Regrettably, I won't be there on Saturday, due to a prior commitment; Captain Grace will take the reins of the blog then and keep you all posted!

Thursday Preparations

We arrived at the Chaifetz Arena at 8:30 this morning for a day of practice and preparation for the competition tomorrow and Saturday. Outside the doors, we were greeted by old friends from Team 4256, WCA's CyborgCats, and reminisced with them for a time. The day was eventful; I'll divide my recap into several simple portions.

Unloading: Once the doors had opened, we headed quickly to our designated pit area, where Carl, Henry, Addy, and I set up the tent while the others unloaded Serenity and our gear. Christine began removing the lead weights and covering them in radiation-blocking tape, for the safety of all involved.

Scouting: Walter filled out a survey from Team 2838 on Serenity's capabilities: once again, we have a finger in every pie, although her primary function is as a mobile feeding station. Jonah and I checked out some nearby teams: Team 3330, System of the Corn, built a robot specializing in climbing to the exclusion of all else; it doesn't even have a shooter. Team 2978, The Cavaliers, built the opposite: a shooting robot without a climbing function. And good old Team 3284, LASER, has built an enormous robot with a hefty shooter. A climbing robot like 3330's is somewhat disadvantaged, at least according to Walter; with the new rules update, robots can't shoot Frisbees from atop the pyramid, so a robot that can only climb can only score 30 points for its team at maximum. Grace and Addy prepared several sample questions to ask other teams while scouting; using a checklist culled from those questions, Grace, Jonah, and I wandered around the pit to interview various teams and hand out buttons.

Practice Matches: Our first practice match was a bit of a bust. Many things went wrong: the arm conveyor belt was too loose to function, the dustpan broke off, and autonomous mode hadn't been programmed for the lighting conditions in the arena. On the other hand, we weren't out there to try and carry our team; we were testing Serenity's capabilities in the field, such as our ability to block or push large robots (we discovered Serenity can do the first, but not the latter).

Our second match was much more satisfying. We were on an alliance with 4330 Rambunction from Ladue and the 4256 CyborgCats from WCA. The latter was especially impressive, scoring several 3-point shots and climbing to the first rung of the pyramid. Serenity, meanwhile, proved an adequate defender. Also of note is that a pole fell on Carl's head while he was entering the arena before the match. Despite this, he knew what he was doing when it came to driving. Additionally, our autonomous was still a bit wonky.

The third and final practice match went a bit astray when Serenity immediately backpedaled and angled herself against the wall in autonomous. After that, we tried and failed to pick up a few frisbees, before entering our defensive game as usual.

All in all, an eventful day for the team. Mike and Christine are staying an extra few hours to make some much-needed changes to Serenity, but the remainder of the team have headed home to rest up for the coming competition. Here's to another great showing for Team 3397!

Competition in Two Days

We compete at the St. Louis Regional in two days! We will be there on Thursday all day prepping and practicing, and then on Friday and Saturday we will be competing. The public is invited! Here are the details:

Where: Chaifetz Arena, SLU Campus

What: FIRST Robotics Challenge Saint Louis Regional

How Much: FREEEEEEEEEEE

When: March 15-16

Why: Because robots are awesome that's why

There you go! Come on down and watch the RoboLions compete in our fourth ever regional!

Late Night Musings

As we approach the final moments of our build season, the robot is looking awesome and ready to go. She is still yet to be named, however- that decision will be made in the exact final moments.

She can now 'vomit' the frisbees onto the floor (or onto other robots!) but cannot yet pick them up. All that's needed for that to happen, however, is the attachment of a small piece of plastic. Other than that, all we need to do is tidy up the robot to get it inspection-ready, practice driving and fine-tune the coding. And naming the robot!

Here are some pictures of our progress today!

And that's all for today, folks! 

The Regional

The Saint Louis Regional was rewarding and disappointing on several separate instances, but I think we can conclude the event was overall a great experience for our rookie members.

We arrived at the Chaifetz Arena on Thursday without incident and spent a day setting up our pit and fixing bugs in our robot (of which there were many). Shortly, Inspector Hartwig arrived to speak with us about our robot, and we were all able to adequately describe Thor's capabilities and materials. Our neighbours in the pit were teams: 3519, their area decorated with a rooster; 3330, "System of the Corn"; and 2978, the "Cavaliers," whose pit was particularly impressive with knights in armor and a nicely arranged set of tools. Our pit area was nothing special, but on the plus side, we consistently received :)'s on our safety inspections, and Ben and Mervin were able to hang up our banner (with some zip-tie difficulties).

The most exciting (and annoying) part of our day was when our team tried to show FRC officials our Bill of Materials for inspection. Marquise returned to me (I was in the stands, focusing on a game of dodgeball between the field crew) and related suggested improvements. This was all very confusing to me, as the BoM he handed to me was not the one I had written. With a trip down memory lane, we eventually realized what had happened: when I had finished the BoM, I had been told to save it on our team flash drive, but it was nowhere to be found at the time. Unable to locate it, I did not transfer the BoM for several more meetings, and by the time we did recover the drive I had forgotten all about it. This meant that our BoM was still saved to the CAD laptop in our lab!

Mr. Sarber, of course, drove right back to our lab and collected the laptop, for which we should all thank him. However, attempting to open the BoM on that laptop, I found that Microsoft Excel was not functioning correctly. I ended up saving the BoM to the flash drive as originally intended and opening it on Dan's programming computer, at which point we were finally able to show the correct BoM to the inspectors. There was only one suggestion, and this brought back another trip down memory lane: I had included the cost of our cRio on the BoM, $525, but the inspector pointed out two things. One, no item's cost on the robot should exceed $400. Two, wasn't the cRio included in our first ever kit of parts and therefore its cost was irrelevant? Mr. Sarber and I recalled that Quorra's cRio had burned out last year in competition (thank you, blog, for reminding me) and that we had bought a new cRio to replace it. The inspectors understood this and cleared us.

At one point, members of team 1985, "Team Titanium," stopped by at our area and spoke with Walter. A big fan of the award-winning team (which would later go on to win the Regional), Walter was in hog heaven and geeked out for a few minutes while the rest of us watched bemusedly. We were also visited by team members from Westminster Christian Academy, who also talked to Walter. Walter's friend Grace (not his sister) attends WCA, and Walter had been bugging her to join the team for ages. He was again happy to carry on a conversation with the quality team (I believe they went on to the finals as well).

On Friday, we began to play in the qualification matches, but these didn't seem to be going too well. Thor ended his first two matches on the ground, having fallen off a bridge while trying to balance with other robots. There were many such casualties during the competition -- Rebound Rumble is a dangerous game! Both falls damaged the board protecting our electronics, but we were able to repair the damage.

Our rankings were still promising at the beginning of the day. We found ourselves ranked #15, and subsequently rose to #7 -- within the top 8!! -- but we later dropped to #18 and finally #26 by the end of the day. Still, we were just outside the top 24, so we figured we had hope.

At lunch on Friday, we located a massive game of Ninja consisting mostly of team 3792, the "Army Ants," with a few members of other teams such as 1208, the "Metool Brigade." We joined and performed well, as Benjamin and Marquel are particularly dexterous and agile. Marquel spent most of one match on the ground and still nearly won! I can happily report that I myself did very well in the match I joined, lasting far longer than ever before.

After lunch, we learned that match #7, the first match we had played in, was to be replayed at the end of the day due to a Kinect station error. This was good to know, as we had lost that match and were eager to rectify that and improve our rankings.

Thor didn't again topple over, although he did break his hammer during one match. Eventually, we scored two 2-point shots during the hybrid period, which definitely restored any team spirit we had lacked previously. Congrats to Dan for programming that into the robot!

By Saturday morning, we proved we had more spirit than team 3284, "Laser," in a shout-off between our teams. This just goes to prove that although U. City isn't very good at sports besides robotics and field hockey, we still know how to make lots of NOISE! We got spirit, how 'bout you?

During a between-matches dance with the judges, our Robolions Walter, Grace, and Marquise got up to join them. Congrats for representing our team well on the dance floor! Everyone had best be glad it wasn't me out there.

After some more field resetting and confusion, Thor rose to 19th place, and by lunch on Saturday when alliance selections were made, we rested at 20th place. However, during the nail-biting tension of the ceremony, we regrettably weren't picked by any of the alliances. This came as a great disappointment to us for several minutes, but after a while we realized the Regional was still a great success. As Mr. Sarber pointed out to the rookie team on Friday, we had accomplished what we set out to do: build a robot capable of shooting a few baskets. That was the plan, and that was the end result, so team 3397 has done well this year.