The East Robotics team ventured down to Greenville and ECU this weekend for the year's first competition. This year's competition is basketballesque, with a low basket that got a robot one point and a high basket that earned two. There was also a climbing station at the end that let a robot earn 3, 6, 9, or 15 points, depending on how high it could climb. Points were also offered for doing things in "automatic" mode, based solely on programming, at the beginning of each match, before being taken over by human drivers.
Because of the technical complexity of the tasks, very few robots were very good at both shooting and climbing. Ours is a shooter and is very good at the automatic routine, consistently getting a couple of shots into the upper basket. It could also climb for 6.
In fact, what our robot and team was best at getting the ball up there. Once it's up in the basket area, there's a lot of randomness because of the shape of the basket and the bounciness of the balls. So just getting them up there is the name of the game.
OK. I'm getting into too much technical detail. After the qualifying rounds, we were 3rd, and got picked to be on the first alliance of three teams by a team from Raleigh with a 15-point climber (no alliance could have more than one because of spatial constraints) that was also a decent shooter but wasn't that mobile. We were crushing everyone but lost in the best of three final. We won the first game handily then lost the second two by one point in each of them after the Raleigh team's climber froze up. Literally in either game if one of many shots that bounced out had gone in, we would have won.
On the first day the competition's spirits seemed a little bit down relative to pre-pandemic tourneys. Mostly that was a function of no dancing. One of the best things about FIRST Robotics (an org founded by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter thingie) competitions is how hard they work to make it fun and inclusive, and one of the best ways they do that is through leading the kids in line dances and also singalongs during breaks between matches. Classics like "Buffalo Girls," "YMCA", "Sweet Caroline," etc. FIRST volunteers and MCs lead down on the competition floor while the kids in the stands get into it. At first Graham was reticent to participate but by now he has gotten into it, which is a wonderful thing to see. All in all FIRST just does an exceptional job creating a fun, collegial and sports-like competitive context for a population of geeky kids who might not otherwise have a place to be part of a team. Lots of kids keep volunteering for FIRST during college and after. I can totally see Graham doing that.
No comments:
Post a Comment