Hello there and welcome back to Eco Robotics’ bi-weekly newsletter, your place to get caught up on everything FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics. Last week, from the 8th through the 10th, team 8016 competed in the San Francisco Regional robotics tournament, and it went amazing. The robot did better than it has ever done in years past and the team itself improved as a whole.
The competition started off with a few selected individuals, including the robots drive teams and head mechanical, programming/electrical, and technical captains arriving at the competition venue, which was held in St. Ignatius High School, on Thursday, the 7th. They arrived with the team's robot and the materials needed to set up the team’s pit (which is the area where the team stores their robot as well as all of the tools they need to fix and tweak the robot if certain parts of it aren't working correctly). On Friday, the following day, the rest of the team drove down to the competition from the team’s school, Credo High School, which is located in Rohnert Park, California, and is about an hour and a half drive away. That same day, practice matches were held at the venue which gave teams a chance to get used to driving on the field and interacting with other robots before the actual competition began.
On Saturday, the real fun began. On this day, the competition officially began and it was action packed. Part of the team had the job of scouting other teams, such as by watching them in matches or by walking around their pit area and seeing what they noticed. The purpose of doing this is so that when Eco Robotics is going up against another team or are on an alliance with them (in the game there are three teams on each alliance) they are able to come up with a strategy of how to go against or play with that team by knowing their strengths and weaknesses. The other part of the team was focused on working on and preparing the robot for its next matches. This was very important because, after a few of the matches, part of the robot's intake was bent from collisions and needed to be quickly repaired before the team went back out again. These incidents were swiftly dealt with and soon enough the robot was back on the top of its game. On this day, more team members, who didn’t have the opportunity to stay in one of the team's two Airbnbs in San Francisco, had the chance to carpool to the event to help out as well.
Overall, the team did amazingly and, even for a couple of matches, ranked 6th place out of 43 teams! This was a big deal for the team as in years past the best they have ever ranked was in the low 20s out of 40 or so teams. Even last year, when Eco Robotics won this same competition and had the chance to go to the FIRST World Championship in Houston Texas, they were only ranked around 26. On another note (get it, like the game piece) this is only the teams 4th year competing. Compared to some teams who have been doing this for over 20 years, this makes Eco Robotics' success all the more impressive.
On Sunday, regular matches continued until around 12pm, and people carpooled down for the day again as well. After these matches ended, playoff selections began. For the playoff matches at the competitions, the top 8 ranked teams had the chance to each pick which other 2 teams they wanted to be in an alliance with. Unfortunately, Eco Robotics was ranked 12th at this point (which is still really good!) which meant that they didn’t have a chance to be alliance captains. Another unfortunate occurrence was that despite the team doing so well, Eco Robotics wasn’t picked to be on any alliances which the team did not expect. Later in the day, though, once the playoff matches had started, Eco Robotics did have a chance to replace a robot on one of the 8 alliances, which had broken, but they only ended up playing one match before that alliance was disqualified.
At the end of the day, and despite not being picked for an alliance, Eco Robotics did an outstanding job at the San Francisco Regional,, and its team members had the chance to meet new teams, catch up with those they already knew, and overall (though exhausted by the end of it all) have a blast!
That looks like all I have for you today. If you are interested in reaching out or have any other questions or concerns for the team, feel free to contact Eco Robotics at credorobotics@credohigh.org or by filling out the form on our website. And thank you so much to all of our donors, mentors, parents, and team volunteers who make Eco Robotics, and the competitions they go to, all possible. We couldn’t do this without you.
See you all soon!
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