FIRST Kickoff

We met at the school at 5:45 on a Saturday morning. Every time somebody exhaled, you could see their breath in little puffs of white. Students stayed huddled in the car, traveling only the brief few feet from car to car. The journey to the FIRST kickoff was rather anticlimactic, a train of cars traveling through the misty morning.

When we reached the school where the kickoff was being held, the reason for the early morning rise became clear. The kickoff was at 10:00- in New Hampshire. This made our kickoff time 7:00. Once we arrived, we joined the other teams on the benches, listening carefully as speakers told us how FIRST and Autodesk had evolved. There are now sixty-one Autodesk teams; the most ever. FIRST’s kickoff was all over the world, separated by fifteen time zones (or nine, depending on which way you go around the world.) This makes sense, considering that there are now almost fifteen thousand FIRST teams all over the world.

We were told that we are going to have to make a difference, that we are the engineers of the future. We nodded our heads through speeches and interviews, members of different teams shifting on the benches as they waited for what everyone had come for; the challenge. You could almost feel the focus as they unveiled the plan. Guesses had been bouncing quietly between benches for a while, and everyone was eager to hear if they were right. The rules, someone joked, would be understandable to a human being this time. Everyone chuckled, and a few people nodded their heads. The game itself was easy enough to understand. Called ‘breakaway’, the game consists of three robots per team, and a three-section field. The goal is to get the soccer ball into the opponent’s goal. Then, at the end, the teams attempt to elevate their robots on the barred pillars in the middle of the field. The teams get two points for elevating their robots, and three points for getting their robot to hang off of another.

After the rules had been explained, and the speeches were over, everyone filed out to get their equipment. Each team gathered around their designated tables, chatting in excitement. There were four rookie teams in our section, and we spoke with them briefly. Each team was friendly and welcomed us, more than happy to chat about the upcoming competition and their opinions. With cheerful smiles, the Liberty team told us that they looked forward to trying to get their robot to hang, and the challenges that would come with that. Newberg’s team wondered if they could do it in six weeks- would that be enough? Nonetheless, they were excited to try, and see what they could do.

By the time we had gotten our kit, ideas were flying and plans were being made. Once back at the school, there were only more ideas, and more questions. Long range, short range, defense, offense, how do we want it to move, what do we want it to do? It’s over the next six weeks that we’ll have to answer those questions.

We are the engineers of the future, and we’re ready to build our robot.

OMSI Scrimmage 10/24

The colors made it look like a rainbow, with each team proudly flaunting their team pride with their shirts, hats, and sweatshirts. We were one of the eighteen teams competing in the OMSI scrimmage, and everyone wore their Pandamonium shirts, making it easier to pick us out of the crowd. The scrimmages we participated in were two on two, red against blue. The point was to get as many balls as possible into the opponents’. There were three people in the game for each team- a driver, a coach, and a human player, who tried to toss the balls into the trailers. In our first scrimmage, our ally was team 1951, and while we lost the match, we won the second one.

After lunch, there was a free-for all practice, where everyone joined together to just play around, and throw the balls into the trailers. It was nice to see that while competing against each other, the teams could still enjoy each others company. After lunch, we competed in a few more matches, and then found out that we qualified for the finals. During the semi finals, we won our first two matches, which meant that we didn’t have to compete a third time, because we had already won two of three.

The final match was in three sets. Our opponents tied with us in the first set, and we won the second set. During the third set, our robot broke down, the radio falling off, which meant that it couldn’t receive signals anymore, and basically sat in one place until we fixed it. Luckily we managed to, and while we lost the third set, we won the fourth which was played because we were still tied with the other team. The prize for our team was Sketchbook Pro 2010 and we’re all very proud that our robot did so well.