Hey everyone! Golden Bots had a stressful, yet exciting weekend in Chicago two weeks ago. The team geared up for the competition and felt ready for our first ever FIRST Robotics competition, or so we thought. The team arrived for check-in at the University of Illinois at Chicago early Thursday morning. Ready to practice on the field, we soon learned that a new rule had been implemented this year: the bumpers were now included in the size restraints. Our team began to think of ways to minimize the size of our robot. However, as a rookie team we struggled to think of effective ways to make our robot the correct size for competition. Realizing we needed help, other teams quickly gathered around our pit jumping in to help us. Without the other teams' help we would not have been able to fix our robot in the time we had. We are grateful for those who assisted us, such as teams 16 and 1939.
After Goldie finally met the size requirements, we began to practice. We quickly learned our gear holder did not work as effectively as we had hoped, due to Goldie's size being changed, so we began to make adjustments to it. During a practice match, our gear holder then completely broke off of our robot, which set us back to square one. Again with the help of others, we succeeded in rebuilding Goldie. We began to practice again, but we had problems climbing the rope. Each tweak seemed to get us closer to completely climbing, but we knew we weren't earning enough points for our alliances, so we attempted a defensive strategy to block the other alliance from scoring. Drew's driving was successful as a defensive robot, until Goldie stopped working after taking a hit. Each practice match after that, proved to us that our robot had some kind of electrical problem. The builders quickly figured out which cables were coming loose when the robot took a hard hit and they got to work fixing it.
Although Goldie never successfully climbed the rope, the team never gave up. We finished 44th out of 53 teams and unfortunately on the last day of competition none of the other teams asked us to join their alliance. This officially meant we were done competing for the remainder of the Regional competition. Despite not advancing, our team continued to work on the robot. Even if we were done, we knew we could better ourselves by learning more about the robot if we continued to work. Throughout all of our trials of adversity, judges came to our pit to interview the team and although we struggled, we always had smiles on our faces. All of our challenges at the competition taught us to persevere and stay determined no matter what. The amazing judges noticed all our hard work and determination, which earned us the All-Star Rookie Award! This means that team 6651 - Golden Bots is headed to St. Louis for the World Championship! We thank all of our mentors, teams 16 and 1939, the inspectors, the judges, and everyone else at FRC for giving us the opportunity to compete at the World Championships. Also, a huge thank you to all of our sponsors for making Sterling Robotics a reality. We couldn't have done it without your support! Catch Goldie in action April 26-29. See you in St. Louis!
by Andrea Finn.
After Goldie finally met the size requirements, we began to practice. We quickly learned our gear holder did not work as effectively as we had hoped, due to Goldie's size being changed, so we began to make adjustments to it. During a practice match, our gear holder then completely broke off of our robot, which set us back to square one. Again with the help of others, we succeeded in rebuilding Goldie. We began to practice again, but we had problems climbing the rope. Each tweak seemed to get us closer to completely climbing, but we knew we weren't earning enough points for our alliances, so we attempted a defensive strategy to block the other alliance from scoring. Drew's driving was successful as a defensive robot, until Goldie stopped working after taking a hit. Each practice match after that, proved to us that our robot had some kind of electrical problem. The builders quickly figured out which cables were coming loose when the robot took a hard hit and they got to work fixing it.
Although Goldie never successfully climbed the rope, the team never gave up. We finished 44th out of 53 teams and unfortunately on the last day of competition none of the other teams asked us to join their alliance. This officially meant we were done competing for the remainder of the Regional competition. Despite not advancing, our team continued to work on the robot. Even if we were done, we knew we could better ourselves by learning more about the robot if we continued to work. Throughout all of our trials of adversity, judges came to our pit to interview the team and although we struggled, we always had smiles on our faces. All of our challenges at the competition taught us to persevere and stay determined no matter what. The amazing judges noticed all our hard work and determination, which earned us the All-Star Rookie Award! This means that team 6651 - Golden Bots is headed to St. Louis for the World Championship! We thank all of our mentors, teams 16 and 1939, the inspectors, the judges, and everyone else at FRC for giving us the opportunity to compete at the World Championships. Also, a huge thank you to all of our sponsors for making Sterling Robotics a reality. We couldn't have done it without your support! Catch Goldie in action April 26-29. See you in St. Louis!
by Andrea Finn.
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