The Atlanta Debrief

Ok, we've been back a week so it's time for a recap.

Most who follow TechTiger Robotics pretty much know what happened in Atlanta. Here's a breakdown:

Thursday:
Background: David Guzman, our on field coach, couldn't join us until Friday. So that meant yours truly had to fill in.

First match was encouraging despite a 2 point loss on our side.

Second match started interestingly - in autonomous mode we ended driving on top of one of our alliance partners. Sean skillfully extracted us to the floor and off we went.

Our alliance partner in the far zone wasn't running.

One of the other field coachs directed us to go play defense. I wasn't thinking and before we knew it, we received a red card for 2 machines in the defensive zone. No points for us is the penalty.

Prior to the third match, the crew prepared to charge the pneumatics system. Robot controller indicates "No Robot Code". We literally jog round trip to the pits and back to retrieve the programming computer.

By the time we were attempting to download the code, our match was going on the field.

The field personnel gave us every second they could to get it done but it wasn't happening. Instead of placing the robot on the field (even if it didn't run) we left it off. Result, no qualifying points - my second big mistake.

Friday/Saturday
David is in the house - Thank God!

There's no need to go into a match-by-match description but despite me putting him in a big hole and having some issues with the robot, David was able to make us look respectable.

Unfortunately we weren't consistant enough to grab the attention of one of the ranked teams. As a result, we watched the the eliminations from the stands.

Final Thoughts
Despite several obstacles, our kids hung in there and kept fighting. We had a meeting Thursday evening and reminded everyone of the importantance of teamwork. They responded and you should be as proud of them as I am.

We are already laying the foundation for next year and beyond. Look for details in the near future.

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank eveyone that contributed to our successes this year. We can't do it without you!

In your servce,
Mr. E

The Final Stretch

Greetings,
Well, we're down to one weekend and 2 days before our trip to The Championship. Rest assured we'll be working hard to put the final pieces in place to make a competitive showing.

The division lists are out and we're in Currie. Along with the us are two of the top teams that will be in Atlanta, 1114/Simbotics from Canada and 469/Las Guerrillas from Michigan. Can't wait to compete with/against them!

I will send the link to the webcast page as soon as it is available.

We're getting some good press. The Pompano Pelican did a story on us. The paper is out today.

The Forum also interviewed us and will have a story in it's next edition. Since they're a subsidiary of The Sun-Sentinel there's a chance it could end up in the Sunday Community news section.

Last but not least, the City of Coconut Creek will be running a video of us on their local access channel 78. We will be shooting footage in Atlanta so it will be a couple of weeks before it's out.

Back to work...

Working on Autonomous

One element we must have in Atlanta to be successful is an autonomous program. Well, guess what, that's exactly what we've been working on.

Enrique Cosme has put together a nice routine that is effective at kicking the balls. Have a look.

Awesome Picture

Taken by Andrew Rudolph, a member of 1902.

Another Update

Here's another video of what we've been working on. I'm getting excited about our progress.

We did our demo last night at the Kiwanis Club of Wilton Manors. Kids did a great job demonstrating and explaining the robots capabilities.

Two weeks from today we'll be in Atlanta preparing for the big show. I will send out (and post here) the link for the webcast when it's available.