The Perris Qualifier was the last of the season’s qualifiers in California. It was cold when we arrived in the morning we arrived, with a good chance of rain. The setup of our pit table was over quickly and soon we were taken to judging.
After robot inspection, judging, and the driver’s meeting, it was finally time for the matches. First, the prompt for this year’s challenge was played and robots for the first two rounds were given the final ok. The judge was a bit suspicious of the sizing of our robot that we would use for the second round. We had already checked it in robot inspection and were confident that we would be fine. Yet for some reason, when the box was put over the robot, it did not go all the way down. What? The robot had passed the inspection . . . we had added a flap to the back of the robot which, by itself, did not obstruct the box. The zip ties that held the flap in place were preventing the box from going flat on the ground. It was too late for any more adjustments. The match was going to start any minute, so the team had to cut it. As a rule, changing anything during the eleventh hour without triple checking it , is a no as we learned it the hard way.
The match actually went fine and Ganesh, the driver, was able to maneuver the robot around the field without getting any debris stuck under the robot that could prevent it from moving. The matches went well and all of the team members were able to try their hand on the field, although it was painfully obvious who the better drivers were.
In between the matches, judges were walking around and asking questions which we were able to answer while passing around the questions to those who knew the most about that part of the team’s work.
Those of us in the pit were carefully monitoring our ranking on the pit scoreboard as the final competitions came closer and closer. We were in second place and teams were starting to come up to us in an effort to form an alliance. Finally we had to send up our representative, Anish, with our picks. Then the first team, Robo Lions chose us to be in their alliance. We accepted and the Robo Lions chose Quantum Potential as their 3rdpick.
First we played the semis against the second alliance and won both matches. Charging Champions played both rounds with Robo Lions and Quantum Potentials respectively.
Then it was time for the final matches. 1st match. We were playing the fourth alliance that had a hanging robot as well. We lost by 7 points. And then we won by 4. And then again with 20 points more. We won the competition!!!
We finished packing up the pit as we waited for the awards to be presented. Jackets, display items, laptops, tools and everything was packed away so that we would not have to spend time after the competition wrapping up.
At the awards ceremony, we realized we had won connect and second place inspire in addition to being the winning alliance. We had also been nominated for Think, Motivate, PTC, and Rockwell Collins Innovate Award.
We are happy with the results from the Perris competition and we look forward to meeting new teams in the Monrovia regional championships!
