In a very stressful two days of my life, I experienced the emotions of elation, gut-wrenching shock, panic, and sweet sweet validation. In those two days of competition, I worked side by side with my teammates in strategizing alliances, rebuilding broken robots, and bringing back a name to the Mills Robotics Team. In those two days, our underdog robotics team jumped out of the "good enough" attitude that previously landed us 63/64th place into a position where we were proud to wear our MRT t-shirts.
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| "Wow it works!" -MRT Team 253 |
We arrive at Fremont High School ready to compete, albeit concerned about how our team would fare with a bottom ranking robot. We hastily replaced some supporting churros on the frame, ensured our switched out drive train could move, triple checked all the electronic wiring, and fixed the autonomous code right before the first qualification match. And the result of match 1: a success! Success: a completely foreign concept to our robotics team. Even more shocking: a win in which our robot crossed defenses, shot goals, and did what it was actually built for (unlike our original tread contraption that flat out died on the field). Still, we kept our hopes low, mainly crossing our fingers to not be next to last by the end of competition. However, now we had enough of a teaser, a tiny spark of "what if?", that encouraged us to look pass our failures from last season and focus on the present challenges.
And I believe that a significant portion of robotics is mindset. Of course, mentorships from NASA engineers or sponsorship deals from Apple, Google, and Qualcomm can be an enormous help to teams (they also provide great griping material for us when we get jealous of custom spray painted chassis). However, our team proved that those things were not required in order to have a successful competition. Instead, it took a lot of hard work and even some luck (if you believe in it) for our team to bring our unassuming robot into the playoffs.
After each match it was a battle to save our injured robot, as it was no easy task to cross obstacles and avoid other fast-moving machines. Similar to paramedics rushing to the ER, we would wheel the robot on a dolly back to our pit to assess the damage. In one particularly rough match, a metal bar completely caved inwards and had to be removed. In another round, we had a wire get disconnected (in which I clumsily crimped my finger when trying to put it back in place). Like a doctor checking on her patient's heartbeat, the multimeter was invaluable in discovering if the voltage was too low. By the end of the night, we were somehow in third place, much to our wonder.
On our second day, we were determined not to slip out of our position for playoffs. Reaching the next level was starting to seem possible, although we were afraid of crashing from too high of a hope. To ease the rising tensions, CalGames held various dance breaks, although the playlist was questionable (think PAPP and the Hamsterdance). We had our amazing driver operating the robot and things were going swell until the last match. In qualification match 46, we were allied with the two lowest ranking teams against three other decent teams. And we lost. Badly. This dropped us out of the top 8 and took away our chance to select teams for the playoffs, although there was still a good chance someone would choose our team for their alliance. It was hard not to feel mad about the other two teams dropping us from second place to ninth. It was hard not to blame them for getting stuck and not scoring any points for the entire match. However, we couldn't get mad at those teams since we were the ones in their position last year. We were the bottom team that no one wanted since we would only drag them down. So, we simply accepted our position and hoped to be chosen for the playoffs.
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| Cross the rough terrain! |
On a side note, there were two all-girls teams that I seriously wished I could be a part of. One was a girl scout troop and the other was from an all-girls high school in San Jose. On the first day, Mimi saved me from being the only girl on our team, but the next day it was only me. Even though two years of working with the guys prevented me from feeling like the "token female", I still felt wistful about being on an all-girl team that ultimately won the competition (and wore matching hair bows to boot). Despite this, I had to accept that working with guys will translate into interactions in the real workforce, so I decided to make the most out of a co-ed (ish) team. Besides, I found it hilarious to thwart their well-meant attempts at chivalry. In one especially amusing moment, four guys offered to carry the 12 volt battery I was holding, in which I responded, "Sure, if you really feel that it takes four people to hold one battery." :D
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| peace |
So there we stood, fallen from the top 8 and waiting at 14th place to be chosen for playoffs. 7 other teams were chosen; our fingers remain crossed. And then we heard the invitation. And even better, we heard our team captain say "Team 253 graciously accepts." Elation at making playoffs for the first time in recent team history lasted about 15 seconds. And then the reality set in that we had to ready our robot (on the 8th seed alliance) against the 1st seed alliance. But we were past panic -after all we made this far, and we had two other good teams on our side.
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| Quarterfinals! |
Faced against top scoring teams, our alliance made the decision to put our robot on the defense. So out came some PVC and duct tape, and in five minutes, we had a defensive robot to block high shots from the opposing team. And thanks to our skilled driver, our robot blocked all the high shots attempted by the scoring machine on the opposite side. Nonetheless we lost the first round 75-87. For the second round, our alliance had to win or else the other team would advance to the semi finals. Almost as if it was miracle, the other team's high shooter did not work and our team won in a 105-65 point match. So it was all up to the final round to determine who would enter the semifinals. We began strong, with the scores almost even, but suddenly our robot lost communication and could not be driven. With our hearts sinking, our robot sat on the field like a hunk of metal until the very last seconds of the match, in which it was too late to recover. Our allies did the best they could and we lost the match only by a margin of 8 points. Although we were disappointed to let our allies down, they graciously thanked us for working with them. It turns out, we were the only victory from a lower seeded alliance during playoffs.
With that, our time at CalGames and the quarterfinals concluded. MRT made it much further than we had ever expected, and we left with high hopes for the future (in addition to the ice cream that our captain promised us).
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| Crazy proud of this team <3 |
~Kaitlyn ^-^