One hears a lot about FIRST competitions before the actual events but it is hard for a rookie to visualize all that goes on. So it was an eye-opening experience to see the amount of energy, time, and other resources that went into creating this year’s Minne-Mini Regional event.
The Green Machine attended this pre-season scrimmage in Prior Lake, at the end of November. Many of us first-time members had a chance to see what our team does in addition to competing. Before the robots were even on the field, a few members and mentors made presentations on safety, programming systems Java and C++, how to get ready for a competition, and more to other teams.
The presentations were successful, but things took a tragic turn of events as it became clear that Zed, the 2013 robot, would be playing its last matches — ever — that day. A critical piece sheared off the robot, and Zed was no longer able to shoot Frisbees. Although our robot still aided its alliances by blocking opponents, it was not chosen for an alliance in the final matches. The team was saddened by Zed’s demise and there was a lot of discussion of how to build a robot to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
Even though we had to pack Zed away in the trailer, our competition day was not yet done. After the competition was over and the last awards given, our team stayed to help tear-down and pack-away the field. A sample of things to come.