We have had quite a few weeks to rest up since the last district event in Week 2. We had an open house during this time and we used our practice robot to demonstrate the game to visitors. Since we did well at Waterford, we did not plan to make any major changes to the robot or minibot, but life does not always follow a script. We ran the minibot quite a few times during the open house and we noticed that the minibot was flying off after hitting the top instead of gliding down. We tweaked it a bit and the minibot starting driving off the pole and could not go up. We found that the minibot design was too sensitive to changes in center of gravity and geometry. Out of desperation, we decided to build a whole new minibot two days before State Championship. The new minibot is actually easier to line up to the pole and easier to deploy.
The Michigan State Championship was awesome. There were so many good robots there and the matches were all competitive. Even though we were not selected in the elimination round, it was breathtaking just to watch these matches. We were very happy to qualify for States three years in a row. Our team won the Best Website Award and our co-team captain Jason Law won the FIRST Dean’s List Finalist Award.