Friday is for qualifying

Today we were off to an early start again. After watching the opening ceremony, we immediately started working on our robot, so we could take it to the practice field as soon as possible. While most people were improving our auto programs, a few went to present our impact essays to the impact award judges. Their colleagues then stopped by our pit to ask us some more detailed questions about our team, and we loved chatting with them about the improvements our team made and about the plans we have for the future. Shortly after, the competition matches had begun.

During the first match, we were able to have our robot climb on the first level during the auto phase, which hasn’t happened during this regional yet. The climb sadly wasn’t awarded with points, because the bumpers were touching the ground, but we knew how to fix that before the next match. Our climb at the end scored us 10 points, which was exciting, but not enough to win us the match. 

We won the following one, sadly with no climbs, but mostly by pushing the fuel to our half so other robots could shoot and score points.

During the third match, a part of our intake broke, but we were still able to intake some fuel, and we scored probably the most points out of all three matches. We also tried climbing during outo, but the robot did not get to the right spot, so it was not successful. 

The fourth match was mostly us helping to get fuel to our zone, because our intake was still broken, and it got stuck too high to go under the trench. Closer to the end, the drivers managed to drive over the bump to try climbing, which was unfortunately not successfull and we weren’t awarded any points. We still managed to win the match with the help of our allies and hit the rank of 11th, which was awesome.

After lunch, we played the remainder of our matches. Our role was very similar - we were passing balls from the middle field to our zone, so our allies had enough balls to score points for our alliance. We haven’t tried to climb again as our climber was broken. All together, we managed to win 4 out of 7 matches, which is a mild success. We’re leaving the arena excited about what the second day of competition is about to bring!

Yours, 

R. U. R.