Never enough 7/16th Wrenches

FVC 2007 Season

Although the FIRST VEX Competition challenge was released in September, our team got off to a late start, registering and assembling the team only three weeks before our regional. Despite our late beginnings, eager and willing recruits quickly filled our nine member team and we were off to a hasty start.

This year’s game was named Hangin’ Around as a reference to the end challenge of having the robot raise itself on a bar. However, the majority of the game centered on robots scoring by moving softballs into corner goals or high goals, while points were increased based on control of the “Atlas Ball”. Extra points were awarded if robots succeeded in driving onto the central platform or raising themselves on the bar at the end of the match.

Speedily designing a robot, our team initially decided to gear our robot’s abilities toward the high goal with an unfolding apparatus which would fit into starting dimensions and unfold to score in the high goals. In addition, the robot would have arms to herd softballs into corner goals. Unfortunately this original design proved a failure just the day before competition resulting in a complete redesign and construction overnight by two dedicated members. Our new design played a more passive role as it collected balls and dumped them into the corner goal.

Despite the many difficulties faced by our team throughout the build season and at competition, our team still managed to win two out of four of our matches at the Trenton regional. Although we were not the most impressive robot at competition, our Vex team gained an invaluable amount of technical experience as well as a close-knit team.