World Championship in Detroit, Michigan - April 2018
We are so incredibly honored to have won the INSPIRE award at the 2018 Detroit World Championships! It was both a goal and a dream for out team! It was also amazing to be nominated for the design award. We ended the tournament as the twelfth seeded team in the Edison division, with the 10th highest OPR at the competition. As a result of our performance, we were nominated by the FIRST Executive Board to be FIRST Global Challenge Team USA for 2018. We will be preparing for this competition through the summer and will attend in Mexico City in August.
The East Super Regional in Scranton, Pennsylvania - March 2018
We were honored to win the Inspire award, which was one of our goals we have been working towards over the season. We were one of the 34 teams that received invitations to compete at the World Championship in Detroit next month. For the first time in team history, we were part of the winning alliance at the East Super Regional (as the 2nd pick). The captain of the winning alliance was 11115 Gluten Free and the 1st pick was 8644 Brainstormers. We were also proud to be nominated for the Think and Control award.
Maryland State Championship - February 2018
We had a blast at the Maryland State Championships in UMBC! We got to meet some great teams and make many new friends. We piloted our pocket schedules for future use, practice for ESR, and overall had a great time. The competition went really well for us! We were the captain of the winning alliance along with MP3 for our first choice and blue chariot of fire for our second. Can't wait to see y'all in ESR!
Delaware State Championship - February 2018
The Delaware State Championship was amazing! We had a blast, engaged with other teams, and made new friends. As always, the volunteers were amazing and kind. We are so thankful to have won the Inspire award and been captain of the finalist alliance! See you at ESR!
The Bullis School Qualifier - January 2018
We won the Connect award and were nominated for control, think, motivate, and innovate. We also were ranked as the 2nd alliance captain. Hypersonic robotics (who were the first place seed) selected us for their alliance. We made it to the finals matches.
Greater DC Area Qualifier - December 2017
At our first Maryland qualifying tournament, we won the Think Award, and were nominated for Control, Motivate, Design, Innovate, and Connect. We were also the winning alliance captain after being ranked first at the end of the qualification rounds. Our first pick was 8395 A-Team, and our second pick was 4451 RoboFoxes. In the semi-finals, we won the first two matches, which advanced us to the final round of the tournament. In the finals, we won the first two matches. We feel that our team performed very well and changed things up in our routine for competitions. New strategies in things such as scouting, packing, and judging turned out to be very successful for our team.
Delaware Meet #2 - December 2017
The Delaware meet was an overall great event. Since it is non competitive, it was a great opportunity for our team to practice driving. We figured out what worked and what needed to be improved on our robot for our Maryland qualifier. Also, our main drivers were not available during the event, so we were able to utilize our spare team and allow them to practice.
Eastern PA Qualifier, Ambler Pennsylvania - November 2017
This qualifier was a great experience for us! We won the Inspire Award, and we were nominated for Control, Innovate, Connect and Think. We were also selected as the first pick by the 1st ranked team, 9971 LanBros, with the second pick being 9872, Informal Logic. In the semi-finals, we won all our matches and won two of three in the finals. The highlight was that in the last match, we scored 420 points with Lanbros, a new world record! The most impactful part of this event was our Programming Help Desk, through which we were able to help three teams. Several teams were able to get there robot working because of a direct result from our help.
Delaware Meet - November 2017
We competed at the Delaware League Meet #1. This was our first competition of the season and our first chance to test our robot and software in a competition environment. It was also our first opportunity to drive in a competition environment. At this competition, we played 10 matches. The matches were not scored and there was no ranking, so it was a more relaxed environment that we thought it would be.
Our autonomous performed very well at this competition. We were able to complete all tasks in autonomous, with the exception of one missed glyph and one missed jewel. The jewel and glyph worked 90% of the time, and we parked in the safe zone 100% of the time.
The drivers had some difficulties in the driver controlled period. As per our strategy, we would pick up the relic at the beginning of the match, so we would always have time to place it at the end of the match. We were very slow picking up the relic. This didn’t allow us much time to score glyphs. Even though it took us a long time to pick up the relic, we scored it in the third zone in 9 out of 10 matches, and it was standing up 8 out of 9 times. Another difficulty we had was scoring glyphs. Since we had a passive glyph collector, we had some difficulty picking them up because we would have to be in the perfect position to grab the glyph. In our best match (glyph wise), we were able to score a total of five glyphs. In this competition, we also learned that it was hard to park our robot onto the balancing stone and keep it balanced, due to its Mecanum wheels. We decided that in future competitions, we should not spend time balancing on the stone unless we find a way to make the process easier.
Our autonomous performed very well at this competition. We were able to complete all tasks in autonomous, with the exception of one missed glyph and one missed jewel. The jewel and glyph worked 90% of the time, and we parked in the safe zone 100% of the time.
The drivers had some difficulties in the driver controlled period. As per our strategy, we would pick up the relic at the beginning of the match, so we would always have time to place it at the end of the match. We were very slow picking up the relic. This didn’t allow us much time to score glyphs. Even though it took us a long time to pick up the relic, we scored it in the third zone in 9 out of 10 matches, and it was standing up 8 out of 9 times. Another difficulty we had was scoring glyphs. Since we had a passive glyph collector, we had some difficulty picking them up because we would have to be in the perfect position to grab the glyph. In our best match (glyph wise), we were able to score a total of five glyphs. In this competition, we also learned that it was hard to park our robot onto the balancing stone and keep it balanced, due to its Mecanum wheels. We decided that in future competitions, we should not spend time balancing on the stone unless we find a way to make the process easier.