Competitions
Competitions
A list of our competitions with results, analysis, and reflection.
Team A finished in 26th place, while team B finished in 25. Both had three wins and three losses.
Team A’s robot had a much more functional elevator compared to the first competition, which made it easier, but the robot still had a hard time lining up to the zone. We also had a lot more drive practice which helped us score more points. In the middle of the competition, our claw stopped working. We were able to figure out that it was due to a faulty port (which we had been having problems with for a while), but once we switched it functioned fine.
Team B also did very well. The extra drive practice helped a lot. However, there were still a few problems with tipping and the claw stalling after a while. Although they didn’t interfere with our playing ability most of the time, there were a few times where we could have scored an extra point if we hadn’t had this happen. The elevator also broke in between two matches, but we were able to fix it in time.
Overall both teams improved in both speed and accuracy compared to the last competition.
Tower Takeover
Bellarmine College Preporatory
November 23, 2019
On October 12th, 2019 we went to the DVHS competition. 4008A ended in 45th (4 losses 1 win and 1 tie) and B ended in the 50th (5 losses, 1 win).
When we got there, we realized that many teams used the preload and simply backed up during auton to push it into the zone. We added this in, which proved to be invaluable as many teams did nothing during auton, allowing us to win.
We had a wide array of problems that both teams experienced. Both teams lacked drive experience, which affected their ability to place cubes quickly. Additionally, both teams experienced tipping problems (more team B due to their agility and speed). We tried to remedy this by placing c-channels at the bottom of the chassis to stop it from tipping far enough to fall over, which helped but was not a solution.
Team A had issues with their lift, which often stalled out in the middle of the match. They have discussed a wide array of approaches to fix this in the coming meetings such as taking motors off to test for friction or adding high torque motors.
Overall it was an exciting and eventful competition, and we hope to improve so we can do better in the next competition.
Dougherty Valley High School
October 12, 2019
Tower Takeover
Though we did not perform as well in this competition as our previous one, we still did pretty well, and our robot remained reliable and accurate throughout the entire competition.
Unfortunately, due to the California wildfire smoke, Bellarmine canceled school the previous day (Friday, 11/16/18). This prevented the team from setting up the competition the day before, which led to an extremely late start in the day. However, despite these complications, we were able to quickly set up and start preparing for the matches.
Several patterns appeared in our performance once again. Though some of these burdened our team, they stayed consistent throughout the day, which allowed us to accommodate for any additional factors in a steady manner. These issues, which included autonomous bugs and electronic problems, were very spontaneous, and we were not able to easily troubleshoot them. For example, our cortex refused to turn off, and would only shut down once we unplugged both batteries and the backup battery. This strange occurrence lasted for several matches, then mysteriously disappeared. Our autonomous also acted oddly when in matches, but functioned as planned when we tested it separately, which we concluded was from confusion when connecting to the field controller.
Our newest edition, the front roller, also worked quite well. We were able to more efficiently collect balls and transport them up, though Lori, our driver, reported that the tread intake was taking longer than preferable to obtain the balls.
Turning Point
Bellarmine College Preporatory
November 17, 2018
This competition was extremely exciting! We were able to score lots of points, and we were chosen for an alliance!
In each of our matches, a common pattern showed up, which had positive and negative aspects. Unfortunately. Our robot was unable to pick up balls against the field barrier, as the intake was slightly recessed from the front of the robot. Additionally, our intake would sometimes fail to grip the ball at the base of the robot, which affected our efficiency. We decided to quickly revise our robot, and implement a front roller mechanism, which we prototyped but did not use, to pick up farther balls.
However, DUG could reliably climb up the platforms, and our flywheel was able to shoot balls accurately. We had no major physical problems beside screws or nuts falling off, and our programming functioned correctly.
In the end, we finished qualification matches in 22nd place, which is our highest score so far! We had the possibility of choosing an alliance, and we prepared to do so by scouting teams and observing robot performances. However, we were chosen by a higher ranking team in the alliance selections, which we graciously accepted.
The elimination rounds didn't go as well as we would have liked, but we're still grateful to have qualified at all. Unfortunately, we "fell heroically" in our first round, along with our Alliance team (Space Cookies, team 1868).
After this competition, we have lots of ideas about our robot, team and strategy. We plan to improve our robot, and hope to make it to Elimination rounds again in our next competition.
Dougherty Valley High School
October 20, 2018
Turning Point
In this competition, we performed very well despite a few minor programming flaws. Ending in 26th place, we achieved the best ranking yet. Part of this success was due to our learning from the previous competitions and the necessary improvements we had made to the robot. Although we had already added the tray for the first Google competition, it did not work quite as well as expected. The sides of the tray would be out of sync; therefore, it was hard to pick up the mobile goal. To fix this issue, we added various stoppers to either side of the tray to prevent the sides from overextending. This solved our problem and allowed the robot to successfully grab mobile goals and score them in the zone.
Throughout the recent competition, there were very few times when we struggled. One of the main problems was our autonomous program. The program never worked during the course of the competition, as it was hard to find the exact value that corresponded to the distance.
In the Zone
Google Competition #2
February 4, 2017
Unfortunately, this competition did not go well. A combination of unlucky events and not enough testing left us with a bad ranking. To start out, we did not test our tray enough due to time. Though it worked fine at home, when we got to the competition, both sides of the tray kept getting out of whack so often that it was impossible to use. This cost us an enormous amount of points, as we could rarely pick up mobile goals. In addition, at the competition, we realized that we couldn't get mobile goals into the far zones. We also did not have a autonomous program for most of the competition, and after we made one towards the end, it was close to working but failed.
Google Competition #1
December 30, 2017
In the Zone
Although we did not reach our original goal of being in the top 30 teams, the competition went fairly well for being our first In the Zone competition. Hallie was the driver and Aruna mentored. We got 33th place out of 56 teams. One problem we had was picking up mobile goals with our old claw, which wasn't very effective, because the mobile goals were too heavy for our claw, making it difficult to lift them. Another problem was that our autonomous didn't work. Otherwise, our robot was functioning reasonably well.
In the Zone
Dougherty Valley High School
October 28, 2017
