Six weeks ended yesterday, February 22nd, with the crating of Munitio. Though she lies in a crate for the next two weeks, work won’t stop on making her better and better.
You see, the scrimmage Sunday taught us quite a few things about our own robot performance along with that of others. We learned that we were never as far behind as had been previously conceived. We learned that our robot was both very similar to nearly all the robots there, but also very unique. We found strengths and weaknesses to our robot and our strategy. The next two weeks will be very busy weeks.
As Sam, Josh, and I perused through the pits, checking out other robots, one thing stuck out in our minds. Everyone was sitting there, still assembling, working on, and making changes to their half-assembled robots. One team straight out told us that this was not their finished robot, that they had in fact just glued this one together just to compete. Through the season, we were worried about being behind; when in fact, we were more on schedule then 90% of the teams there.
Going down a different path, we noticed that each almost every robot fell into one of two classes; ones that had mecanum wheels and a kicker, or those that had traction wheels and a kicker. Along those lines, about half of the robots there had some form of ball control, but only three of them had a form of hanging. Of the three, only one had a nearly successful attempt. But every robot had a kicker, and every robot that hoped to use that kicker had some form of ball control. If you didn’t have ball control, you didn’t kick. And if you can’t kick, you can’t score.
We found that out the hard way… Our ball control had worked the night before, but something had gone awry. Now, every time a ball would approach our rollers, it would jam up everything. So, the nearly useless kicker before, was rendered completely useless after the fact. But luckily, we had options; and we used them. We found that we had tremendous success in playing defense, in blocking shots, in stopping hangers. We were the ultimate support robot. But that’s all we were, support. And we have set out to change that in the next two weeks.
With a kicker redesign and a pneumatic overhaul in the works, the Bears have a lot of work ahead of them. If you get a chance to see them Thursday morning, don’t expect to see them standing around. And the robot you see Thursday morning could be half of what we have by Thursday afternoon.