“The Green Machine” made tremendous strides at the FIRST Northern Lights Regional, Duluth, MN competition the first weekend in March. Despite a rocky start, we made it to the finals and placed second in the event. Along the way, we encountered a lot of challenges but we worked our way through them systematically and with collaborative unity.
During the first day of the competition, we had practice matches, which gave us time to troubleshoot software and driver issues before qualification matches began on Friday. For example, in one practice match, our autonomous software drove the robot in the opposite direction of where we wanted it to go. Our coders worked throughout the day to resolve these issues “trying to re-engineer our way through bugs and malfunctions”, said Nico L, Co-Software Lead. On the second day of the competition, we competed in nine qualification matches. In the first couple of matches, the robot was not able to score any points because of autonomous error but Team members quickly got to work to understand what went wrong. Rachith A, a software member, explains, “A lot of errors occurred that we didn’t expect to happen but we worked our hardest during matches to try to get our robot running”. Throughout the matches, our communication between subteams was extremely effective, which played a vital role in resolving our issues efficiently. After these mistakes were corrected, we found that “our robot performed very well when we switched to a defensive role as we realized that our robot could withstand hits from other robots” said Adele S, Assistant Captain. This is clearly shown by the end of qualification rounds, as we climbed the ranks from 36th to 12th place.
During alliance selection, we were picked by Alliance the 3rd seed alliance captain Team-2847-The MegaHertz, Fairmount Schools, Fairmont,, and Team 3883-DataBits, Park High School, Cottage Grove. After selections, we talked about strategy with our alliance and decided that our robot will continue to play defense. “This strategic positioning was great for the Alliance, especially after our performance during the last couple qualification matches when we switched our game plan to concentrate on our strength”, said Kaylie C, Assistant Captain, and Driver.
This strategy worked tremendously well throughout our playoff matches. With the help of our alliance partners, we won both matches in the quarterfinals and semifinals. Said J. J., “The team had an amazing comeback, thanks to our combined team efforts.”
We headed into the final matches playing against what many see as Minnesota’s top-ranked team, Team 5172-Gators, of Greenbush-Middle River, MN. The competition came down to the final seconds, when, in the last match our robot fell off of the highest (traversal) rung. Now, back in the workshop, we are ready to fix and improve our robot. Throughout this competition, the team had a lot of fun and we gained a great deal of knowledge that we will take into our next regional event, the Minnesota North Star Regional, at the University of Minnesota’s Mariucci Arena, in April! – By Jimmy V. and Venna W.
