As I said last year, the notebook is probably not a great guideline for what the RECF wants in terms of structure for a design notebook, but it is a decent engineering report and a (hopefully) interesting insight into our robots and design process. (This is pretty much a disclaimer that if you copy our design notebook structure you will probably not win design awards).
The reason we didn’t attempt our cube denial strategy in the finals is that QCC2 had two fast 8 motor drives, which meant there was no way we would have been able to collect a reasonable number of cubes in time, or prevent our 24" robot from being blocked at the same time. We did attempt it in some earlier matches with good results.
We were disappointed with our Robot Skills run at worlds which didn’t quite showcase the scores we were capable of. Here is a video of a 118 point run (note this was before it was clarified that preloads must start on the middle of the starting tile).
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Shoutout to QCC2 for some extremely hard fought matches, and definitely some of the best Vex matches I have ever played. Congratulations on the championship, and thank you for the great sportsmanship.
Shoutout to Team BNS. You are more than just amazing competitors, you’re amazing friends and I’m going to miss you guys a lot if I decide not to come to worlds next year.
Shoutout to the Barker family for letting us invade their house for the week before worlds, and a lot of times before that. The Barker garage remains one of the strongest regions in VRC/VexU :p.
Shoutout to the rest of the AURA team who couldn’t make it to worlds but supported us from back home.
Shoutout to Kiwibots for running an amazing Vex Robotics program in NZ.
Shoutout to all of the volunteers at worlds.
Shoutout to 2915A, congrats on defending the world title, and 2918A, on their excellence award.
Lots of people asked about the needle intake on Big Mac (dubbed “the Ultra-Needle”), so here is our innovate award submission, which explains the idea as well as we could in 1 minute:
And for any VexU teams (or interested hs teams) who want to have a look at our 3d printed parts, here is a ZIP of all the parts used on both robots. (has STEP, STL, and Solidworks)
First off congratulations on another amazing season! 3 red trophies certainly isn’t something that comes easy!! I can not tell you enough how impressive your robots were. The combination of well thought out strategy, killer autonomous modes, and driver skill proved to be extremely tough to beat! I know that our entire team was very much looking forward to those finals matches and they certainly didn’t disappoint… It was also really cool to get to know you guys better and hopefully we will see you again next year?? Congrats again on an amazing year!
It was fun competing with you guys at Worlds, you and QCC2 definitely were a spectacle to watch in the VEX U division, and had in my eyes some of the most exciting finals matches I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for this, Lucas. The past 3 years at worlds for me wouldn’t have been the same if you, Jack, and Shane weren’t there. I hope you decide to compete next year because you’re not only one of my closest friend from VEX but also an amazing competitor and I would love to continue competing against you (and hopefully beat you )
Do you guys remember this quote?
Considering the energy with which it was delivered, I would be somewhat surprised if you didn’t!
Whatever happens, we will back you.
Rise Against - sudden life?
Or should it be credited to Dylan Thomas?
But whatever it is - isn’t this the very thing that keeps most of us going back again and again? Just a bit more… I think we can do it the next time round… Just a bit more…
But really hope to see you and your team next year
Kentucky is a long way from New Zealand, and its a difficult and expensive journey at that (a lot like a robotics season really…). I hope AURA will be back at worlds next year regardless.
Auckland is a pretty long way from Tauranga too. It takes a good mentor to help a team and a student grow. It takes something else to drive 5 hours every week to give advice, to load skyrise sections, to time skills runs, or cut metal. I’ve been told by a lot of people in the last few weeks that I must be the most successful Vex student to never win a world championship. I think you must be the best mentor to never win a mentor of the year award :). I can’t wait to see what the HoS boys come up with this season.
Thank you for your time and your support Dad. It cannot be measured in words in a forum post.
Well Meng, I should let you know that I am an aficionado of good taste and fine culture…it was Rise Against.
I hope to see you again also, you never know.
But I am pondering if this might possibly be an opportune time to graciously retire from Worlds. The new breed are bringing on reliable collision avoidance / recovery technology and computer assisted goal targeting technology. I envisage trajectory tracking to be implemented to the point where teams are able to target the other alliances balls in mid-flight and fire their own balls into them, deflecting all the balls into their own goal. Old fashion good driving will become redundant. Amazing… (Mid-flight collisions are going to occur quite regularly because the flight paths cross from the loading zones to the goals, but they will be accidental and extremely amusing… I sometimes think I should take robotics more seriously).
If I could purr, I would…
Thank you guys for letting me have some involvement. There has been a 147:1 ratio of laughs to tears, and many moments I will never forget. Sorry I suck at electronics and coding (some mentor I am). :rolleyes:
Given the (as expected) variant in the density of the balls, looks like the new breed is going to add on auto density detector as well. I can imagine seeing DIY scale balance and limit switch taking measurements of the balls, and then changing the motor strength accordingly.
You are right - I do feel old.
Think I will just ask my teams to practice the old school driving… I have no idea how to do a density detector…
I’m not sure that’s practical with VEX parts. You are talking about building a reliable mechanism to detect only a couple grams of weight difference.
Could you build something and get it to work sitting on a table top? Maybe. Could you build something that works over the course of a full day of competition and actually functions correctly when the robot is moving around. Very doubtful.
Congrats again on an amazing year!
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