Robotics Log 08 - After OSF
My opinions on the Oregon State Fairgrounds competition
Monday, March 9 (4:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
This Friday and Saturday was the Oregon State Fairgrounds competition. A few people on the team have seemed very pessimistic about the outcome, but I am hopeful.
The data: After qualification matches ended, we were ranked 9th. During alliance selection, there was a lot more picking between captains, so we ended up being captains of the 6th alliance, picking 4125 Confidential and 2926 Robo Sparks. We ended up being eliminated in the playoffs, but we won our second match. According to Statbotics, we had a total EPA of 77.4. During Qualification matches, we played against 5468 Chaos Theory 3 times in a row, which led to us missing out on a lot of ranking points. We won the Creativity Award (mainly due to not having a hopper-based design) which gave us an extra 5 district points, so we now have 32.
My take: Going into this season, I knew there was a very low chance of going to world championships. In the years that we did, we had had a lot more members and (more specifically) lots of very-experienced seniors in charge of everything. I initially thought that this year would be similar to 2023, but now I am seeing how similar it is (so far) to 2022. In 2022, we had nearly the exact same performance in our first competition as this year, but in 2022 we did slightly better in playoffs in terms of district points and didn’t get any awards. I think 2026 will go very similarly overall. In 2022, we were using tank drive which was our main disadvantage. We completely redesigned our shooter before our second competition in order to shoot from further away, and at that competition we got the GP award. This year, we are planning to add an adjustable hood (maybe?) to our shooter before Clackamas, our second competition. In 2022, we made it to district champs, but got no further since we weren’t picked during alliance selection. I predict that the same thing will happen this year, and I don’t really see us going to worlds. Of course, I will try my best to! but I don’t think it’s the most realistic thing, and I think it will be better to focus our energy on improvements for Clackamas and district championships.
Adding to things about 2022, that year was very important to SERT. Since it was immediately after Covid, we didn’t have many members and a lot of learning had to be done. In that year we prepared new members a lot, which is what made us so successful in 2023 and 2024. I think that this year is going to be very similar to that, with lots of rebuilding of the team, in order for us to do very well next year. I’ve talked to a few students who seem interested in being co-captains next year and I think next year will go incredibly well, these members are incredibly smart and care so much about the team.
Speaking of improvements, I have a few ideas. CAD designed an adjustable hood for the shooter to make it pass more reliably (and be able to shoot from a further distance), but I don’t know if that’s the best idea. While it would make some things better, it would also (most likely) make the shooter itself less accurate. I think a better idea would be to fix the intake roller so that it doen’t get broken aymore (and more importantly, be more direct to the driver to make that not happen). Also, we are able to pass very well, but for some reason the driver decided that it was too annoying to do because the balls bounce sometimes, which I don’t think is an issue because they stop bouncing by the time that it’s an active period.
Meetings until Clackamas: 17
Team Goals for Next Meeting:
Mechanical:
- Unpack from OSF
- Clean robot of any lemon zest (fuel shavings)
Software:
- Come up with more auto concepts (passing?)
Strategy:
- Consider different scouting solutions (scouter schedule would be amazing but might be too complicated?)
Media:
- Look through the rest of the photos
- Make progress on robot reveal