Blog

Glow sticks, broken stuff, trophies, oh my!

Posted by Anna on April 3, 2010

Today was interesting to say the least. We got our toughbox fixed quickly enough, and there didn't seem to be any problems... And then the robot stopped working on the field. Wut. It took us several hours to figure out what was going wrong (the combination of a broken e-stop button, a defective gamepad, a bad usb hub, and a classmate battery fail). So in our second seeding match this morning our robot just decided not to move at all, which caused a bit of a panic. Fortunately we got that fixed by the final match, in which we were quite epic and managed to help assist much of the scoring that happened in the match, as well as score a few points directly ourselves.

Aaaand we got picked for elimination matches! I feel bad because I don't remember what team numbers we were with (I need to learn to remember people based on stuff other than what shirts they're wearing). Actually we were quite a strong alliance, but we got awfully unlucky in our matches. Zazu didn't work the first match because of the driver station battery acting up again (which was not a problem at all in Wisconsin.... weird), and then in the second match one of the other robots in our alliance wasn't moving. We got decent scores considering we were 2 against 3 in both matches, but alas, we weren't quite good enough to win either of them. Oh well. At least now we have lots of very valuable knowledge to prepare us for Atlanta!

We won the Gracious Professional award! I guess lots of teams appreciate the help we give out at competitions. Actually today Amy and I were asking various judges and other officials about the legality of a hub replacement, and one of the guys we talked to said something along the lines of "I would say 'Go ask the Green Machine, they know everything,' but then I was like, oh wait, you guys are the Green Machine..." which I found amusing. 

Also, our own Laurie Shimizu won the volunteer award! The person announcing had the entire Shimizu family go up since they were all volunteering for the regional, which was especially awesome.

Also today was very important because it marked the first time this season that I shed blood in the name of robotics duty. I poked myself on a really sharp wire. This is why I stick to programming (but hey, you can get major wrist injuries from typing too much).

Anna