CalGames, our first tournament of the year, was held from Friday, October 4, to Sunday, October 6 at Woodside High School. During this tournament, we competed in a replay of Destination: Deep Space, the game from earlier this year.
We were very optimistic heading into CalGames, but this optimism was soon dampened on Friday afternoon. While queuing for a practice match, we noticed that the belt driving the climber on the right side was disconnected from the arm it was supposed to raise. The black oxide bolts attaching the two had sheared. This was a large problem; we realized that an axle replacement would take about 6 hours, and we had no idea what was causing the problem.
Luckily, the pit crew was able to engineer a quick fix for the problem on Saturday morning, and our expectations for the event rose dramatically. There were a few hiccups in the first few matches, but the number of issues diminished as our drive team became more confident.
Unfortunately, we did not get selected and did not make it out of qualifiers, which was disappointing. While we did not make it out of qualifiers, we did end up winning the Autonomous Action Award. This award is given to the team which demonstrates proficiency during the autonomous period of the game, during which the robot performs solely on pre-programmed instructions. This was made possible by the programmers behind the vision system, but also the engineering group as a whole.
Although we still have ways to go in terms of rankings, CalGames showed a strong basis on which to improve on during build season. We took notes how other teams consolidate mechanisms. We won an engineering award. We had a pit team that was confident and productive under pressure, a much harder thing to practice and improve than robot ranking. These are all keys to success that we are accumulating.
We are going to implement what we learned this weekend to have a better build season than ever before. Thank you to the families, friends, and mentors that are by our side and support us in this journey. GO TKO!
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