On November 16th I competed in the QCC Vex Robotics scrimmage competition, and was honored with the Excellence award, the highest award in the tournament. This qualified me for the All-New England
tournament.
How the day went
start - to - end
When we arrived, I started immediately setting up my pit area and charging my batteries. At 9:00 I went to the auditorium for the opening ceremony. After that I went to have my robot approved before my first match, which I thought was in thirty minutes. Then I looked at my match schedule, and found out that I was in the first round of competition! I rushed over, and made it in time. My alliance won the match, due to the fact that the opposing alliance did not arrive in time for the game.
In the seeding matches, I was played with Western Technical Vocational High School and the Bancroft Robodogs #2, both of which were friendly and valuable allies. My favorite qualification mach of the day was the sixth match in which one team in my alliance and one team in the opposing alliance could not compete. This match was The Dreaming Robot V. the Tech-Know Commandos, who had won the world championship last year. I won this match due to their robot malfunctioning.
Who was there?
There were about 50 teams in the tournament. I met many of them, including Sullivan Middle School and Claremont Academy.
How
I felt good at the competition, well prepared, and even though my performance had issues, I did well.
I was very lacking in the scouting department, but that wasn't too bad for a first-year team.
I felt very honored when the judge awarded me the Excellence Award, the highest award in the tournament.
Lessons Learned
I learned a lot from this competition, especially since it is my first.
Person to person lessons learned.
-Making friends matters. The unique ally system in vex demands that a team must have good relations with its
peers.
-Always being on the lookout for potential allies is important. I lacked in this aspect, but I will try to improve.
Game lessons learned.
-Vex toss up is a very fast game. There are lots of available points, and no complex mechanisms required to get them. This places a heavy emphasis on speed, and I felt that my robot was not fast enough.
-There are lots of different ways to get points, so it is a good idea to have a versatile robot that can adjust to
the strategies of your opponents and allies.
-The robots in Toss Up need to be precise even when visibility isn't great. This means that your robot can't
need precise programmed or remote controlled movement.
Robot lessons learned.
-The robot needs to be easily portable. Easy transportation makes the tournament flow more smoothly and
makes you punctual. Mine wasn't, so I made modifications in-tournament.
-A Toss Up match is chaotic, so your robot needs to be stable. My robot was not stable enough, so it fell over in two of the qualifying rounds.
Video of the competition
