On November 20th, FRC 1816 competed in the Minne-Mini, an off-season scrimmage event at Prior Lake High School. In the month since the Minnesota Robotics Invitational, our robot fabrication subteam undertook a number of tasks to get ready for this final play of the Infinite Recharge game. We built a new climber since the previous one broke during the Roseville event; we also switched from a 4Bar intake to a linear intake, to enable more precise pickup of the game balls. At this competition, we welcomed a new member to our drive team, Kaylie C., one of our rookie members. Even with little to no driving practice ahead of the event with the swerve robot, Kaylie says she learned a lot and found the experience from the other members of the drive team “super helpful.” “See one, Do one, Teach one,” one of the ways our team encourages experienced team members to share their expertise with newer team members is having a comeback of its own, now that we are back to in-person build sessions. This is one of the ways 1816 remains competitive and institutional knowledge is transferred to future teams. At the Minne-Mini, we earned enough qualification points to be the 3rd alliance captain. We selected FRC 3184- Blaze Robotics from Burnsville, 2502-Talon Robotics from Eden Prairie, and 2129-Ultraviolet from Minneapolis to compete in the playoff rounds. In the semi-final match we lost to the 2nd seed alliance led by FRC 2052-KnightKrawler, New Brighton. It was a breath-takingly close match, and we came so very close to the win. Unfortunately, our robot was unable to complete its final climb after a piece on the inside back of the climbing mechanism came loose and jammed the mechanism, said Andrew G., a senior and member of the robot fabrication subteam. To this writer, it sounds like we won’t be forgetting to use more Loctite in the future!
–By Venna W.