Lessons we learned at the event

Other team ball and basket
Our robot had been doing well all evening, and we had been chosen for the quarter finals and semi-finals.  We went up against a team that had a very impressive robot with a mechanical claw that could move around and pick up balls.  Our first mission during that match was to head toward the basketball hoop and get our ball in the center basket.  Well, the other team's robot was so fast, it beat us to the hoop.  We were shocked!  That had been one of our best moves all evening. Next action: We may try to speed up our robot for the next competition.

What worked well/not
In our earlier design of our robot, we had a fork-lift to raise the CD and glasses.  We kept having difficulties with loose and weak pieces.  We finally figured out how to strengthen our robot's arm by interlocking our pieces.  That really improved our robot and kept it from serious damage in the competition.  We added a pointed piece to the front of our robot to assist in pushing a chair out of our way while we did the bus stop challenge.  Our robot seemed to look like a train with an arm on it.

Missed bus stops
The light sensor was having trouble detecting the white bus stops.  We think the problem may have been one of three things, or a combination of any of them.   The problems we think caused it were:  the lighting, the fact that the bus stops were not fully fastened to the side of the board, and the side of the boards not being sanded down and painted properly.  Our robot wanted to move to the left a bit, that, too may have caused a problem.

Loose basket
We noticed that the basket was not fastened down at the competition.  This made aiming for the basket difficult, especially if the other team had bumped it.  This may be why we had missed a few baskets at the beginning of each match.

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