Kickoff was Saturday, Jan. 7, at Becker High School. Kickoff is an event in which every team worldwide watches a video of the season?Äôs gameplay. We also pick up our base set of robot parts called Kit of Parts. This year the game is called ?ÄúFIRST Steamworks.?Äù
The game this year will have the same 2 minutes and 30 seconds of total game time per match. The first 15 seconds of autonomous mode, where the robot will automatically move in a programmed sequence of moves. After the autonomous mode is complete, the drivers will take control of the robots and manually drive the robots to compete in this years objectives. The drivers will have 2 minutes and 15 seconds to complete as many objectives as possible.
There are 2 main elements this year, the Boiler and the Airship. The boiler has a low and high goal which accept 5-inch bright yellow fuel, which coincidentally look like large whiffle balls. The low goal takes 9 fuel(balls) to accumulate 1 point and the high goal requires 3 fuel for one point. The low goal is 2 feet high and the high goal is 8 feet high. A total of 40 points will build the boiler to full pressure and give one ranking point to your alliance team.
The airship has four rotors which will start one at a time, as large yellow gears are delivered to the airship. The large gears will be delivered one at a time to the airship by the robots and the pilots will pull the gears onto the airship via a gear holder on a rope. Once the gear is on the airship, the gear is put onto a spindle to turn the rotors. The first rotor takes one gear, the second rotor needs two gears, the third rotor needs 4 gears and the last rotor requires 6 gears to make it turn. If all rotors are turning before the time is up, your alliance team will receive a ranking point.
During the last 30 seconds, the pilots will release the climbing ropes which each robot will have a chance to climb to earn them points towards a win.
Ranking points are single valued points that will move an alliance team up or down a scale where each team is ranked overall. Each team is ranked from first to 60th at their event. The points earned from filling a boiler, gearing up the airship and climbing the ropes, will give you a scoring number, which if higher than your opponents alliance, will give you
2 ranking points. For a total of four possible ranking points.
The ?ÄúEV-W Mystery Machine?Äù and our goals this year were set quite high. The plans were bigger, but still held the same desire as last year, which was to make it as simple as possible and do it the best we can do. This year the team has a robot that will not only carry fuel (balls), but also pick fuel off the ground and throw it into a high goal. The robot will also deliver gears to the airship, which makes the robot a multitasking robot. And finally, the robot will climb a rope to latch onto the airship during the last seconds of the match.
This year there will be two human players and a drive coach. The drivers station will house the driver and the co-driver, who will run some of the manipulators(fuel pickup, fuel feeder and fuel thrower and climber). The Human players will be in the airship as a pilot to pull up gears and start the rotors or stay in the ground to feed fuel and gears to alliance partners. The coach will once again know all the rules to the game and make sure our drivers and human players play the game to the best of their abilities. The other major role of the coach is strategizing with our alliance teams and coaches to ensure we are united, so we receive as many ranking points as possible as an alliance.
A new Mentor joined the team this year. Mike Heese joined the team and brought his experience and knowledge that took us to a level we could only hope for. He not only taught students how to design parts on a CAD(Computer Aided Design) system, he also opened his shop and business to show the students how to engineer and build parts. He had every student that wanted to, assist in building parts for the robot. His excitement rubbed off on the students and really
got them involved.
The 6175 Mystery Machine team: (from left) Jacob Hopfensperger, Grant Kahlstorf, Jada Jesberg, Ashley DeJuliannie, Derick Utecht, Justin Schlangen, Eric Fodstad, Nathan Utecht, and Joey Kuechle, with mentor Mike Hesse and coach Rob Flaschenriem in back. Submitted photo.
The Regional and conclusion:
We started off the competition week by getting our robot prepped for the tournament. We set up our pit, updated the robot, had our inspections and off the practice we were. Our practice matches went well and some final tweaks were made to make sure we were competition ready.
Friday morning, during the first match we found out that alliance partners will be more necessary to win matches than ever. We lost our first match to an alliance that were running on all cylinders. They were not quite up to par with our competitors, but we did put on a good show. The second, third, and fourth matches we shined. We won all three of those matches and moved our ranking up to the 12th spot. Unfortunately, the fifth match was where things started to go downhill. During that match we were the only robot out of our three alliance teams that were able to compete on the floor. We may have been the only robot competing, but we did not give up and did give our competitors a run for the match. The sixth match was very equally lined up and we were very excited about the alliances on both sides. It started out great then went bad very quickly when our alliance member?Äôs robot went down. We had a great match, but this was another set that proved that everyone had to be up, running and on their game to win the round.
The seventh, we knew we would be up against a hard battle. Our alliance partners had robots with very limited abilities. We came up with a strategy and we accomplished everything we planned and were able to do. The only part that hurt us was the fact that we were the only robot that could climb on our team. We came up short by less than one climb but proved that we could do what we set out to. That brings us to our final match. This was another nail biter to the end. We started out with an alliance match up that was going to fight to the end. So we had not only been the first match, but we were also the final match, for which we tried not to feel the pressure. We ended up having almost identical scores with the exception of not having an autonomous gear placed.
Overall, we had a great season and had a team and robot that was second to none. Sometimes you get the alliance partners that are up for the challenge and ready to go, and sometimes you get teammates where things just aren?Äôt going their way. Not going to Worlds doesn?Äôt mean we didn?Äôt have a successful year. I believe we had an awesome year and can?Äôt wait to see where our graduating seniors take the knowledge they gained from Robotics and implement it in their future endeavors. And for the students coming back and the new students joining next year, there will be so much to build on from this year?Äôs experiences.
We are planning to have a summer Robotics camp in August, so stay tuned. In the meantime, keep a lookout, robots are all around us, you just have to look and you may see one. It may be a railroad crossing, automatic doors or a conveyor moving your food to the cashier at the food market. Robotics come in many forms. Sometimes when you least expect it, you?Äôll see one doing something for you and wonder how did someone come up with that. Who knows, it may have come from a child with a great imagination and an idea to make the world a little better.