Day One at the St.Louis FIRST Championship

Our first day of competition was a bit rough as we experienced a number of setbacks that were disheartening to all of us, to say the least. This morning our build team members got up bright and early to head over to the arena and start preparing the robot for its first practice match at 9:00. Unfortunately we ended up missing this because our robot was unable to make it to the initial round of inspection.

Meanwhile, our PR team worked on getting to know the other FRC teams in the Galileo division and scouting their robots. One of the many perks to this competition is getting to see the innovative robot designs, as every team has their own individual story of how their strategy worked well enough to get here.

The 4146 robot was ready to go just in time for our first match at 2:10, yet the autonomous mode stopped functioning correctly. Since then, it has not worked all day. During our other two matches of the day we were suffering because our robot’s best trump card was missing, but the drive team did well to make as many points for the alliance in tele-op mode. It seems to be an issue with the coding and will just need lots of time and some practice in the shooting pit to be amended. The drive team worked frantically through dinner to fix the problem and finally, just in time for Robo-prom held by team 399, their efforts came to fruition and seem to have pinpointed the problem.

The team quickly primped and preened, then embarked in high heels and dress shoes looking very dapper indeed. We took a series of zany pictures, as well as the obligatory “prom pose,” in front of the St. Louis arch and in the Hyatt’s lobby. Most of the team was on the dance floor until the very end of the night. We shimmied, shuffled, and even got low! David and Marina represented the team by dancing for prom king and queen, yet we believe the competition may be rigged since our dancing skills were just too good.

Tomorrow we start all over again! We hope to fix the autonomous mode early enough in the day to perform better on our matches and have a more successful day.