Day four - Calm before the storm

Sleeping is for the weak. At least, apparently, the FRC thinks so, as they run the competition since the morning, so we all had to be on our feet at six-thirty and ready for a long day of training and tactics. We entered the Williams Arena, which is divided into wrestling and basketball. In the smaller - wrestling - hall we have the so-called "pits", where we repair the robot. We have a completely unique "double-pit" there because we have our pit attached to Breck so that we can share parts. The pit is always full, because it is tiny and there is a crowd of all the mechanics and programmers. Therefore, many have taken a position in the stands of the arena, where there is a view of the entire arena and from where tactics are planned, diaries written and rests taken. From there, we always walk along the halls with the robot to the main - basketball - arena. This is where the competition itself takes place. Teams always come there and get ready for the match. Two drivers and one coordinator (in charge of making decisions) stand at the driver station and prepare the computer and controls, the mechanic with the human player put the robot on the field and they set it up correctly. The human player then goes to the dispenser for game parts and the mechanic takes the robot cart to the sidelines. Meanwhile, the photographer takes a position in the marked media spot. After fifteen seconds of autonomous driving, when the robot operates completely alone, it is driven by the driver for two and a quarter minutes, while the human player dispenses game elements as close as possible to the robot (but only as the rules allow). We have only performed a symbolic vote to approve the name of this year's robot. He got the name Zkřivan because it is comically crooked no matter what we do with it. However, it does not have the slightest effect on performance, on the contrary, it would be harder to maneuver it without this anomaly. The first training match ended well, Zkřivan scored 31 points himself and together it was enough to win. The second match did not work out very well, but in the third we played well again and optimism about the competition began to get out of control. Ironically, the biggest problems occurred only after the training rounds. Immediately after them, we started to repair the axis of the arm, it is the most crucial part of the robot and requires constant maintenance. However, we had to replace several gears and remove the motors for a while. Subsequently, we quickly broke the rivet gun, injured each other with a rubber tube and cut a string without having any replacement. However, we stayed at the competition until eight in the evening, so we had time to fix everything (except the string) and look forward to the next day.