In 2007, our third year, we expected things to get a little easier with the experience under our belts, but instead we were surprised to find the stress of not just a regional at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) but the Nationals in Atlanta as well.
The game challenge last year was called, “Rack ‘n’ Roll” and consisted of a large, metal rack with each level having eight arms evenly spaced in a octagon shape. In the first 15 seconds of the game, known as autonomous mode, robots were able to place specially marked tubes on the rack. Once autonomous was over, two pool tubes could be placed on one arm at a time, one being a colored tube known as a ringer (blue or red) and the second tube known as the spoiler (black in color) to negate the first. Spoilers were unlike the other tubes since they could be added and then removed from the rack.
The end game of the challenge consisted of an attempt to elevate one or both of the other robots on the alliance to either 4 or 12inches of the ground. We were successful in our end game by building a ramp durable enough to hold most robots we teamed up with.
We traveled to Atlanta with high hopes and curiosity to see what other teams were bringing to the table. Overall the time spent in Atlanta was full of learning experiences. |
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In 2006, our second year, we attended the finger lakes regional for the first time at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The game was called, “Aim High,” and there were three goals for the opportunity to score points with medium sized nerf balls. At the end of the 10 second autonomous period, the alliance with the most points could gain a 10 point bonus and be placed on defense for round two. Rounds two, three, and four, which were all 40 seconds long, are human-controlled rounds.
Between rounds two and three, the alliances switched from offense to defense, or from defense to offense accordingly. At the start of round 4, any alliance could score into their corresponding goals. At the end of the match, an alliance had the chance to receive bonus points by placing its three robots on a platform below the center goal. |
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In 2005, our rookie year, we attended the first finger lakes regional ever to be held at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The game that year was called, “Triple Play” and it was the first time that three teams joined together to form an alliance. The pieces used were called, “Tetras,” they were made from PVC pipes and varied in size.
The game was played on a field set up like a tic-tac-toe board, with nine larger goals, also shaped as tetras in three rows of three. The object of the game was to place the scoring tetras on the larger goals, creating rows of three by having a tetra of your alliance’s color at the highest point on the goal. Triple Play was a very strategy intensive game, requiring quick thinking on the part of the drivers and operators to optimize the field for their alliance.
We won two prestigious awards at RIT, the first was the “Best Seeded Rookie” and also the “GM Industrial Design.” |
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