For the fourth year in a row, Miss Daisy attended the Hatboro-Horsham District Competition in Horsham, PA from February 27th to March 1st. A well-loved first-week competition, it is the time for teams to unveil their new robots, play on a real field for the first time, and socialize with other teams.
While our design concept was solid overall, once we saw the robot on the field, we discovered two sources of trouble: we needed more practice attaining and stacking totes and there were many aspects of the robot that could be improved. Though we did not score high, we could see what improvements needed to be made with both the robot and game strategies. Ranked in thirty-first place, we were fortunate to be picked by the seventh-ranked alliance, Team 357, Royal Assault, and Team 486, the Positronic Panthers. Our performance during the playoffs improved; by the time we were defeated during the quarterfinals, the drive team could maneuver the robot into making sturdier, taller stacks.
After the competition, we decided to use our struggles as points to improve upon. In the two weeks before our next competition, the shop and lab were in a flurry of activity. Several dramatic changes were made to the robot. Originally, two chains were suspended in the center of the robot; to better stabilize the elevator, we changed this design to one chain on each side.
A sheet of lexan was placed behind the intake; when the drive team backs up the robot to the human player station, totes can be fed through the robot into the intake. All of these changes have leant themselves to more efficient and stable stacking.
The new-and-improved Miss Daisy XIV rolled into the Springside-Chestnut Hill District Competition on March 12th. From our first match it was clear that the robot was performing much better than it had been before. During autonomous, we and our various alliances attained several robot sets. Throughout the competition, our robot was able stack four or five totes with a container on top. Before alliance selection on Saturday, Team 341 was ranked eighth out of thirty-four teams. We were picked by the second ranked team, Team 203, One TUFF Team. Our second pick was Team 486, the Positronic Panthers. Our alliance performed well through the playoffs, our high average enabling us to move onwards to the semi-finals. While we were defeated there, every student and mentor on the team was proud of our achievements and improvements.
Another source of pride came during the awards ceremony: it was announced that junior student Moira Joy (MJ), one of our Dean’s List nominees, would be competing at the regional level for the award at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship in April. The entire team is very proud of her!
