2017 Houston World Championships

by The Hitchhikers | Apr 30, 2017 | Competitions

“We made it!” proclaimed several hitchhikers as the World Championships in Houston commenced on Wednesday. Prior to the start of Worlds, we found out we had been placed in the Carver Division, which turned out to be one of the more competitive divisions. The start of the World Championships found our team getting settled into our hotel, unbagging Slartibartfast, and setting up our pit in the area marked “Carver.” We also attended a conference and visited top teams such as Team 118, Robonauts; and Team 971, Spartan Robotics. Eventually we were all done for the next day, and we went back to our hotel for some much needed rest.

The first day of competition dawned bright and early, but the team was wide awake as we were in the first match of the entire competition. The whole team was excited and with a “1, 2, 3 go!” the first match of the day started. Slartibartfast raced over to put a gear onto the airship, but ten seconds into the match, the refs realized that they had forgotten to remove a cardboard box off the field and, as a result, had to reset the match. What a let down! They reset the match and tried it again. This time, however, Slartibartfast didn’t move. Somehow, an ethernet cable got unplugged from a radio during the reset. It seemed as if everything was already going downhill, but we knew that we had to take our own advice; “Don’t panic! Stay optimistic about everything.”

As the day progressed, it got better and better. Slartibartfast was doing amazing and was catching a lot of attention. We had continued to take our advice, and it was paying off. Towards the end of the day, we had two big matches; the first one was against the number one ranked team in our division, and the second one was an alliance with Spartan Robotics. Both of these team’s robots were capable of delivering a gear and shooting 40 kpa during the auto phase by themselves. Needless to say, we were very nervous to be going against such a good team with Spartan Robotics watching as we had invited them to watch while strategizing for our next match with them. In a shocking turn of events, we managed to upset the number one ranked team in our division while having one of our best performances all season by delivering seven gears and climbing. The following match with Spartan Robotics was also a huge success, and Slartibartfast continued to perform at a high level. We ended the day ranked 15th with a ton of teams in the top eight impressed with us and some new knowledge gained from the conferences that our team attended.

The next two days were a rollercoaster of emotions. During the qualification matches, we continued to perform well, but missed two opportunities to show our climb because we used the last few seconds of those matches to deliver the last gear for a fourth rotor. We ended our second day of competition ranked 20th. Even though we knew that teams were interested in us, we were not sure what would actually happen during alliance selections. Alliance selections passed quickly, and for the first time in our team’s history, we were picked at Worlds! We ended up as a third pick on the seventh alliance with Team 4063, TriKzR4Kidz; Team 231, High Voltage; and Team 4911, CyberKnights. Though our alliance did not advance beyond quarterfinals, we still had a blast! We spent the remainder of our time cheering on our fellow NC teams, packing up, and watching the Einstein finals. The team was sad to see World Championships come to an end because we had learned many new things from the conferences, strengthened as a team, and made lasting friendships with other teams. However, we knew that though competition season was over, there is always the off-season and next season to look forward to!

2017 State Championship

by The Hitchhikers | Apr 17, 2017 | Competitions

The week before States, and we started off with a meeting full of reflections, redesigns and a cup of tea. We envisioned a newly designed gear gobbler (our gear collector) to withstand collisions, a frame to prevent gears from falling into our electronics, and dreamed of perfecting vision tracking. Leading up to States, team members scrambled to prepare Slartibartfast for the State competition while practicing our motto “Don’t Panic!” Upgrades to the gear gobbler included changing the gearbox to make it faster, moving the chain to the middle, and adding an encoder to simplify the programming. The frame consisted of two pieces of corrugated plastic that moved with the gear gobbler to prevent misplaced gears from getting stuck.

Saturday came and went along and had us feeling like a bowl of petunias falling to its demise. Anything that could have gone wrong did such as our rope snapping mid-climb or our battery smashing into our encoder wires and rendering Slartibartfast motionless. Throughout the entire day, our team kept their heads held high and continued to practice our motto. By the end of the day, things started to turn around. We ended on a three game winning streak and moved up in the rankings.

Eventually, it was time for alliance selections and, as we were outside the top 8, all we could do was hope for our team name to be called. After the first round of selections finished without 2059 being called out, the team uncharacteristically started to panic. We saw glimpses of our season coming to an end, but when the sixth alliance selected us, we hopped aboard our Heart of Gold. Onboard was the ROBOMonkeys and a familiar face, Team SPORK, who had been Finalists with us the previous week. In our first series of matches, our alliance easily moved on with back-to-back four-rotor matches. In the semifinals, both alliances fought a hard battle, but we managed to move on once again. To our disbelief, we had made it to the finals where we competed against the TerrorBytes, The Zebracorns, and their comrade Hawktimus Prime. After two hard-fought matches, we had to admit defeat with grace. We finished State Championships as Finalists and receivers of the Hard Hat award. But our journey was not over yet. We qualified for the World Championships in Houston, Texas, where we will compete against teams from all over the Universe.