Robot build/strategy speech by Karthic?

This!

If you look at 5225A, the only robot ever to go totally undefeated at the world championship, they had a fast field cone and autonomous strategy but were weak on the stationary goal and with preloads. With an outfielding strategy in mind, they were able to design a shorter lift and fully passive intake that improved their fielding but made it impossible to score on the stationary goal. 8825S, their alliance partner at worlds, chose the opposite strategy. They went for a ridiculously tall lift and excellent loader speed with slightly slower outfielding and a less dominant autonomous routine. Even though both robots would probably have lost a 1v1 to many well rounded robots (929U, 202Z, 2131W), they ended up combining their totally different styles to win worlds.

Both 5225A and 8825S were well built, well programmed, and well driven, (5225A was especially well programmed) but the two robots looked and performed nothing like each other. Had their builders built for a well rounded robot or with a different strategy, the results would have been very different.

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