2016 FRC Championship

Overview

This past weekend, from Tuesday until Saturday, we participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition World Championships in Saint Louis, Missouri. On Tuesday, a smaller group of students left early to set up the pit and make sure everything would be set up for when the rest of the students arrived on Wednesday. We were placed into the Newton division, and with Team 1241, Team 1731, and Team 708 we played some great games in eliminations, but unfortunately were eliminated in the subdivision finals.

Qualifications

On Thursday and Friday, we played 10 qualification matches across both days, and earned 9 wins and 1 loss throughout those games. In qualification match 100, we even managed to push a disabled robot onto the batter, securing us an extra ranking point and winning us the game with a final score of 140-139. The qualifications overall went well for us, as we earned 35 ranking points and ended up as second seed going into eliminations.

Eliminations, Einstein, and Awards

Saturday opened with the alliance selections, and we partnered up with the first seed team, Team 1241, Team 1731, and Team 708. With this alliance we hoped to consistently score highly while preventing the opposing alliance from having free reign on their side of the field. This strategy seemed to work out throughout our quarterfinal and semifinal games, with us scoring around 240 points in most of those games. In fact, we scored 254 points in our second semifinals game excluding foul points; however, a red card on our alliance prevented our score from being recorded that game. Moving into the finals, we matched up against an alliance including Team 217, Team 4678, Team 3476, and Team 188. Although we played hard, we were eliminated from the tournament in the Newton finals.

In the end, we would like to congratulate Team 330, Team 2481, Team 120, and Team 1086 for their success in winning the FIRST Robotics Competition World Championships. Additionally, we are proud of Team 987’s achievement in earning the Chairman’s Award, cementing them as a Hall of Fame team. Overall, we are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to interact and play against many great teams at the Championships and hope to do even better next year.

Silicon Valley Regional Champion

This past weekend, we participated in the Silicon Valley Regional hosted by Google.

Qualifications

Throughout the qualification matches, the work we put in over the past few weeks payed off as we performed stronger in many areas than we had at CVR. We overall performed well, consistently crossing defenses and shooting high goals from the courtyard while earning a win/loss record of 8-0. Our success in the qualifications allowed us to place second in ranking moving onto the alliance selections.

Eliminations and Awards

During alliance selection, we went with the first ranked team, Team 1678, and Team 1662. With those teams, we went undefeated throughout eliminations and came out as the regional champions. During our second quarterfinal game, we even scored the highest amount of points in the tournament with a score of 205. Although we didn’t win any awards, we were honored to play with such great teams and are looking forward to the upcoming World Championships.

Central Valley Regional Champion

Team 254 just returned from the Central Valley Regional.

Qualifications

During the Central Valley Regional, from Thursday to Sunday, we competed with a variety of teams from all throughout California. Throughout the qualification matches, our robot, Dropshot, performed solidly, and despite one match with connection problems, it won 9 out of its 10 matches, ranking us at second place for the qualification matches. In our second quarterfinal match, we even scored 210 points, the highest score of this season so far.

Eliminations and Awards

During alliance selection, we joined an alliance with Team 1678 (Citrus Circuits) and Team 3970 (Duncan Dynamics). In our second quarterfinal match, we scored 210 points, the highest score of this season so far. We also made it all the way to the finals and won the regional, scoring 205 points in our first finals game. After the exciting finals, we also received the Innovation in Control Award for Dropshot’s targeting system. Overall, this tournament was successful for us, but we plan to continue iterating on our designs and improving shot consistency for the upcoming Silicon Valley Regional.

FRC Kickoff

This Saturday kicked off the first day of the 2016 FRC season with this year’s game, Stronghold. After the initial game reveal, both students and mentors gathered in the robotics lab to analyze this game’s rules and come up with strategies to tackle this year’s challenge. Once kickoff wrapped up around 4:00, the team began work on designing and prototyping parts of the robot.