FIRST - Minnesota

Team #93 attended the Minnesota Regional competition held this last weekend in Minneapolis. The team was firing on all cylinders and had a great weekend. We received four new trophies and a banner! The trophies are for being part of the winning alliance, Rockwell Automation Innovation in Controls Award, Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award, and Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award.

A special thanks to everyone who came out to watch the event and support the team! Anna, my fiancée came out all weekend. My Grandpa Dick came out on Friday and Saturday. My Mother Sue, sisters Taylor & Elizabeth, Aunt Deb and John, her son Johnny came out on Saturday. Anna's brother Dave made it on Friday.

Thursday at the competition was a practice day set up for most teams to work the bugs out of their systems. We had most of our bugs worked out from the Milwaukee regional, but made some improvements to the autonomous modes. One major update gave the robot the ability to navigate over an entire lap in 15 seconds without a driver! Very cool. This allowed us to gain critical points at the beginning of the match. During the practice matches the driver and operator got the feel of the robot back after not working with it for two weeks. Everything was working very well and it appeared to be the makings of a very good weekend.

In addition of the 54 teams there were 30 rookie teams at this competition. Many of the rookie teams were struggling to have even partially functional robots. Because of this many of the mentors and students from our team went out to help as many of the other teams as possible. We rewired an entire robot for another team, provided multiple teams with software support, helped teams work through many mechanical issues including a robot that was 60 pounds overweight, and countless teams came to us to use or borrow tools and learn from us. Near the end of the day a mother of a student from a rookie team walked by our pit where we repair our robot. She made the comment that we are one of the most intimidating teams there due to our experience and professionalism. One of the mentors responded that we’re not intimidating…we’re inspiring. We were once again ‘doing FIRST’.

Friday during the qualifying rounds we ran very well. We were in the very first match of the day and proceeded to rack up nearly ninety points. Unfortunately we were outscored by 12 points and lost this match. It was a very tough opening round but was a great way to get the crowd pumped up for this inaugural regional even. We won the next six matches and ended the day with a record of 6 wins, 1 loss, and were ranked in 2^nd out of the 54 teams attending.

Also on Friday I got terribly sick! Anna and Dave went to go get me some medicine and when they got back they found me leaving the bathroom looking 'green'. Everyone knows that it takes a lot for me to throw in the towel but after some coaxing I went back to the hotel to get some rest and get over whatever hit me.

On Friday there is a partial awards ceremony that follows the qualifying matches to recognize teams that have unique accomplishments. During this ceremony we won the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Controls award for features implemented on the robot to conserve power during the match. This award celebrated an innovative control system or application of control components to provide unique machine functions.

Saturday morning I was feeling better and headed back to the competition. We had two remaining qualifying matches. Both matches were very close. We won the first match. During the second match we had a sensor feedback failure which rendered our robot arm unusable and we lost by a very close margin. At the end of the qualifying rounds we had a record of 8 wins and 2 losses and were ranked 3^rd overall.

After the qualifying round there was an alliance selection process where the top 8 teams can pick two other teams to join them. We were in a position to either pick two other teams to join us for an alliance or be picked by a higher ranking team to join their alliance. During the alliance selection the first ranked team picked us and we joined them. Together we selected another team that complimented us and the alliance got the robots and teams ready for competition for the afternoon of best-of-3 elimination matches.

During the eliminations rounds we went up against groups of strong alliances. We had a purely offensive strategy of brute-force outscoring our competition by using two robots to hurdle the ball and the third robot operating as a race car running laps. Our alliance consistently scored between 94 to 102 points every match. Because of our strategy and well functioning robots we were able to win the quarter finals, semifinals, and finals rounds without loosing a single match.

During the awards ceremony that followed, awards were given out for various accomplishments. We won three additional awards during this ceremony.

Because of the organized manner, cleanliness, and safety features displayed we won the Underwriter Laboratories Industrial Safety award. This award celebrated the team that progressed beyond safety fundamentals by using innovative ways to eliminate or protect against hazards. The winning team consistently demonstrated excellence in industrial safety performance that showed throughout the competitions from uncrating to re-pack.

Due to the tremendous amount of support we provided to other teams we won the Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award. This award celebrated outstanding sportsmanship and continuous gracious professionalism in the heat of competition, both on and off the playing field.

The third award was for being a member of the winning alliance for the robotics competition.

N.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics, Team #93 continues to be a very well respected and competitive team among our peers. We’re already looking forward to championship event coming up the weekend of April 19^th in Atlanta!