Squidbots: December 2015

Hello Everyone!

On Sunday, December 13^th, The Squidbots, #10125, competed in their first of two tournaments. After a 10+ day of working on Saturday, the team woke up early Sunday and was on the road before 6am! And we were off to North Branch – a 1.5 hour drive for us! Although we didn’t do as well as we would have liked, we had a great time and learned a ton!

Since the doors opened at 7:30, we only had a little time to get set up and have our robot ready before our inspection at 8:00. We weren’t entirely sure of what our robot was capable of seeing as we did most of the finishing touches the previous night (or morning;))! Aidan, Jacob, Jonah, and Ben all went to the inspection while Emily and Frankie continued getting our table set up.

We had 5 head-to-head competitions. The first run, our robot moved! This was exciting news for us as we didn’t know what it could since we finished it that morning. We scored 12pt. and although that is not a “good” score whatsoever, it most certainly was better than none! Second run our robot scored 32pt. with our alliance! We were getting better. We found out our robot can right itself, meaning if it flips onto its back, it can flip back! Unfortunately, the last three runs were not successful. Our robot somehow got disconnected all three times and sat still for the entirety of each match.

So you may be wondering…How did we finish!? Well, we say with the hopefulness that next tournament will be way more successful, that we finished 24^th of 24 teams! Somebody has got to take that spot! And although we aren’t happy about it, we are only more motivated to do better next time!

Throughout the tournament we took notes on ways we could improve for the next tournament, what we learned we shouldn’t do (both from our own experience and witnessing other teams), and what we did that worked well! Below are just a few of the notes taken.

Ideal to have at least two people in the pit at all times in case someone doesn’t know an answer.
Have a garbage at your pit
Scouting is important
Have a team schedule at our table so we and the judges can tell who is where and when.
Bring display board to our presentation
Wait 2-3 seconds before answering the Judges questions to make sure we think it through properly and let everyone have a chance to answer.
Bring almost everything into the interview (board, book, business cards, stickers, magnets, robot, etc.)
Talk and make plans with your alliance
Offer help and supplies for other teams
Judges are ALWAYS watching – so smile, share, don’t be bossy, be kind, and make it known your having fun
Have confidence in your answers – someone can always add more to your answer.