Robotics Trip to Atlanta - Day 3

(This one took a while to get out. Why? Because spending 5 days with 40 teenagers is exhausting!)

One of the chaperones took one look at me this morning and said, "You look tired!" It's been a long week. I'm glad we're going home tomorrow.

We had our last two qualification matches today and lost both, leaving us 3-4, ranked 54th out of 86 teams. Boo. It sounds like an excuse, but... we didn't get much help from our alliance partners (see this thread on Chief Delphi for a discussion of the sorting algorithm used to determine match-ups during qualification matches) and were double-teamed constantly. I guess it's a compliment to our team and robot that we would draw so much coverage. I was surprised by how high some teams were ranked; luck in alliance partners during the qualification matches is a real factor.

To determine the FIRST champion, the 300+ teams at the Championship were divided into four divisions (Newton, Galileo, Curie, and Archimedes). Each team plays seven qualification matches, after which the top eight teams select two alliance partners to join them in the division tournament. The tournament matches are played best out of three. (Each match-up plays at least 2 times.) The division tournament determines a division champion, who goes on to compete against the other division champions to determine the FIRST Champion.

After our last qualification match, part of the team volunteered to help take down practice fields in the pits. (I went with them because a free T-shirt was offered.) Alliance selections took place while we were down there. We may have been ranked 54th, but we were the 5th team selected! It was exciting to see our team number pop up on the monitor; we let out a cheer when we saw it. Our alliance was led by Team 1595 (St. Georges School from Spokane, WA) and included us and Team 93 (Appleton Area School District from Appleton, WI). 93's robot was a ramp bot; it worked reasonably well and could score ringers too, albeit slowly. 93's ringer skills actually came in handy a number of times when 1595's robot and ours were encountering some harsh defense. Team 1595's robot, was a ringer bot, like ours, but had a crazy arm. It looked kind of like the number 4 (with two joints and a claw).

Our first match-up was with the 4th seeded alliance. In what would be indicative of just how deep the field was at the competition, the 8th seed beat the 1st seed. In similar fashion, we beat the 4th seed with a fair amount of ease and moved onto the semi-finals. In the Semi's we lost in 3 games by 8 points. Would have won by 2, but our alliance was penalized 10 for "de-scoring" a ringer. From the murmuring of the flight crew, it was a pretty bogus call. (Check out this thread to read all the grievances on the officiating.) Nevertheless, I was pretty darn proud of our kids. They fought the good fight.

Closing ceremonies was intermixed with the matches between divisional champions. The matches were pretty rowdy, lots of pushing and shoving, and one alliance was DQ'ed for tipping a robot on the other alliance. Closing ceremonies were slow, and long, and well, I'm not much for that sort of thing. It was impressive to hear about the team that one the Chairman's Award, the most prestigious award given. Team 365 from Wilmington, Delaware, the Miracle Workerz, have done some amazing things - very deserving in my opinion. A big head from DARPA announced the future involvement of his organization with FIRST and showed some cool videos about the things they do. Very cool. The DARPA Grand Challenge is an incredible event; check it out if you've never heard of it.

The wrap party after closing ceremonies was loud and dark. In all fairness, the party should have been outside, but rain and a Thrasher's playoff hockey game prevented that. So, performers prepared for an expansive venue were forced indoors. I should have brought ear plugs. The usual assortment of carnival-type games and booths were set up and the food was pretty good. The entertainment was pretty impressive: Stomp (the Stomp), a hypnotist, Circ de Soleil, and others put on a good, but deafening show. The team was exhausted, though, so we only stayed an hour or so.

Not a bad day! Not a bad trip! It's amazing what these kids, with a little help from some patient engineers, can do!