Shreyas

At our last meeting, we worked on Farmrun, our weakest run, in my view. I just came back from India, so I had to be filled on what is going on. Jonathan, who happens to be in Florida, called in and told me the procedure of jigging Farmrun. I don’t know why, but it did not work that often, so we found a new way of jigging and changed the program, a little bit, because it was hard for Yotty to maneuver in such a little space. We made it hit the robot to the side and push it to base. This way worked almost every time! The way we jigged it is bay putting the bumper right behind the third line, making the corn catcher parallel to the bottom black line. At this time, it was time for the meeting to end.

Competition! I never thought that day would come. But yet we were there, on December 3rd at 7:15 in the morning, standing outside Toledo Tech Academy, with Yotty slumbering in my hands. Registration took almost no time. Surprisingly, we were the first team there. I prepared to have my hair sprayed green as some other teams came in. They were smart enough to bring their own mat to practice on, so they didn’t have to quarrel over the two test tables. We should do that next time.

We went to be judged on our robot, and the judges really liked our fish sweeping arm. Then we went to be judged on our core values, where we had to make an ice cream cone out of envelopes in less than five minutes. We succeeded and rushed toward the Opening Ceremonies, where Mihir announced our team and our names to everybody. Then, we had to go and be judged on our project. We presented Eggpardy, and the judges loved it. They even gave us suggestions on what extra things we could do, if we went to districts. After that we went to the test tables to practice for the first round. We were confident that we would do good.

Then the first round came. Everything went horribly. Ratrun failed, Farmrun failed, and Eastrun failed. The only thing that worked was Fishrun. Our total score for that round was 83 points. We were so disappointed. After the round, we tweaked Ratrun and Farmrun at the test tables. We came back for the second round and did much better. Ratrun didn’t work, but Farmrun,  and Fishrun were a success. Eastrun did all right. We touched the east wall, and accidentally knocked down some bacteria, but we didn’t get the thermometer. Including touch penalties, we scored 111 points in the second round.

We relaxed for a few minutes and then headed for the third and final round. I was really nervous and the coach gave us an uplifting talk. I felt a bit more confident. We walked to the table and set up. The referee counted to three and the round started. Ratrun was a success and worked well. Farmrun got the corn, but didn’t get the truck. My heart skipped a beat when I pulled out the fish sweeping arm, only to find it was broken! We immediately decided to skip the fish and go straight to Eastrun. I jigged nervously, fearing the worst as I set Yotty off. I looked at Yotty as he rolled towards the wall. I couldn’t believe my eyes when Yotty’s arm smacked the thermometer spindle, just like we programmed, causing the thermometer arm to spin around all the way!! Then Yotty spun around and touched the east wall! For that round, we got 119 points, which put us in fourth place out of thirteen!

We went to the Closing Ceremony. We all thought we would be the alternate team because we didn’t get in the top three. To our surprise, we got handed the Project Award! The judge must have really liked Eggpardy. Those points bumped us up to third place! That meant we were going to districts! We celebrated at Mihir’s house and discussed what we could change for districts.

Last meeting our coach was out of town but we still got something accomplished. We started working on the 2nd Ratrun! Our first method was to follow the line to the blue rat but that did not work at all. So we just made Yotty go forward and turn to the left but we found that our claw was too low. We made it higher but the claw was coming to the ground. We changed the program and the claw was at the right level but it was off center and too fat. We could not do anything about it because right then the meeting ended. We are definitely going to get the 2nd rat next meeting!

This meeting our team started designing Yotty by seeing what he has to do like moving, picking up items, pushing items, etc. We drew a rough sketch of what our robot would look like if it could do all those thing at once, on our new whiteboard! The coach told us about the project we had to do about food processing and told us to find five foods we could do for our project. My list is pepperoni pizza, cake, caesar salad, PB & J, and Cheetos. It is time to get excited!