Our Robot Moved!

Hey Everyone!!!
    After a lot of remodeling done on Lula, we finally got her to move!  Watch this video of her traveling across the arena, while moving her arm!

North Branch Tournament

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.

In this video you can see our robot right itself for the first time!

Partial team waiting for doors to open!

Our Drivers (Jonah and Jacob) and Drive Coach (Emily) strategizing. 

Frankie and Emily next to our display table.

Fixing up the robot in between matches

Thank you to our Gold Level Sponsors for making this possible!

Ink Out!

The Squidbots

Squidbots Update

Hey everyone!  Welcome back to the Squidbots blog!

We would like to update you all on what our team is up to! Every meeting each team member takes notes individually on what goes on at that meeting.  We also take everyones goals, accomplishments, and notes and make team notes. These notes are what we will be compiling for our Engineering Log which we will turn in to the judges at the tournaments. Tonight, we thought we would share with you some of the team notes!

Meeting Goals:

• Finish building the mountain we started Sunday 
• Build the second mountain
• Program the robot to pick up a cup successful

During the meeting...

• Ben and Jacob working on programming and...THE ROBOT PICKED UP THE CUP!
• We also got the robot to begin to climb the completed mountain. (video at end of post) However, it did not even make it past the first "churro" before it tipped over!
• Discussed possible ways to make the robot get over the first "churro" on the mountain (getting bigger wheels, using tracks, making our robot taller, evening out the weight, etc..)

• All our goals (getting the robot to pick up the cup, building the mountains) were met tonight! Because of this, we were able to move farther along by experimenting with the robot going up the mountain and exploring options to make the robots go up with more ease. 

So there you have it! We had a very successful evening! Not only did we achieve our goals for the night, but we were able to accomplish beyond that and make our robot drive onto the mountain for the first time! Some awesome progress was made!

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to check back frequently to hear our latest news! You can also subscribe to our blog by submitting your email in the sidebar! 

The Squidbots

Don't forget to watch our robot attempt the mountain for the first time!