Catching up on Boston

So, Thursday in Boston, March 5, was the first day of practice matches. This allowed teams arriving to practice with their bot and fix any malfunctions.

Friday, in Boston, March 6, was the first day of qualification matches. Teams were placed in random alliances of three. In each match a blue alliance and a red alliance would compete to either have their human players or their robots score the balls in the trailors dragged by their opponents' robots.

The first 15 seconds of a match are autonomous, where the robot functions without human interference; then there is two minutes of tele-operation where the humans are in control of the robot; in the last 20 seconds special green-purple balls can be scored for extra points.

^ This above is the empty playing field.

^ This robot above is filled with moon rocks (the purple-orange ones) which it is ready to spit into an opponent's goal. The red trailor behind the robot is its own goal.

^ Above is a refueling station at mid-field. From here, moon rocks can be scored by the human player that sits in the seat. The blue-orange balls are empty cells that can be exchanged for the green-purple balls called super cells at the corner refueling station.

^ At the corner refueling station (behind Team 701's robot), human players stand up for their shots. The empty cells (or moon rocks) deposited here during the game may be picked up with special grabbers. Empty cells will be exchanged for super cells in the last 20 seconds (you can see them hanging at the very edge of the photo) and moon rocks will be shot like basketballs during the entire game to score some points.

After forty matches or so, the day ended, but more qualification matches started off the next day.

Saturday in Boston, March 7, the qualification matches were completed in the morning. We paused and ate lunch and watched a short performance by the Blue Man Group.

^ The Blue Man Group pulled our announcer onto the field with them to pull some rock moves.

From the winnings of all the qualification matches a list of all the teams was compiled in order of most wins to least wins. After the Blue Man Group, the first 8 teams on that list got to choose their alliances for the Final Matches. Team 701 was 10th on that list, but we were chosen by the 6th place team and we got to play in the quarter finals before we fell out entirely.

Sorry it took so long to update this! To see all the pictures I took while I was in Boston, see My section of the Vanden Robotics Team Web Album. Soon I will post videos of the Blue Man Group and of a very nice match that Team 701's alliance won.

In other news, I was denied admission to MIT. Looks like I'm going to CalPoly, and I'm completely happy about that. Also The Inventor Design Competition is progressing forwards! All 96 entries were made available to the public, and can be viewed Here. Team 701's entry is the 11th one down on Page 2 of the entries. Check 'em out!