A few weeks before THOR, North Carolina’s FRC off season competition, we had the idea to rebuild our robot, Dent. We knew it would not be easy because it required us to build another one in a little over three weeks that was better than our old one. Wanting to challenge ourselves, though, we decided to take the risk and start rebuilding. The project of creating another robot also provided the opportunity to train our new students.

By the time we finished building our new robot, Arthur, we only had a couple of days to practice driving and making stacks. Once we arrived at THOR, we found out that practice matches were not being run, which meant that our drive team was unable to get practice on a full field. As a result, our first few matches were a little rough because our drive team was still trying to get familiar with Arthur. As the morning progressed, our drive team got better and better. We ended up being able to stack four totes with a container and noodle on top, and get one to two stacks of three totes.

After the qualification matches, we ended up being ranked twenty-fourth, a result of being unable to catch up after our first few matches. During alliance selections, the third highest-ranking team chose us as their first pick. Our alliance ended up consisting of four teams: Team 5160, The Chargers; Team 2640, The Hotbotz; Team 2655, The Flying Platypi; and Team 2059, The Hitchhikers. The elimination rounds followed in quick succession, and our alliance ranked third overall. THOR was a great learning experience and will help us improve our performance in the offseason event, SCRIW, next week in South Carolina!