Hello Everyone!
On Sunday, December 13th, 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 24th 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.
In this video you can see our robot right itself for the first time!
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| Partial team waiting for doors to open! |
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| Our Drivers (Jonah and Jacob) and Drive Coach (Emily) strategizing. |
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| Frankie and Emily next to our display table. |
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| Fixing up the robot in between matches |
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| Thank you to our Gold Level Sponsors for making this possible! |
Ink Out!
The Squidbots
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