The whole auditorium was buzzing with excitement even at 8:30 AM on Saturday, January 5, the morning of the FRC kick off for 2013.  There were just a few people who were still trying to wake up with some coffee and donuts graciously provided by some volunteers from different Pittsburgh teams.

A number of people spoke to the crowd including Patricia DePra, the Western Pennsylvania FIRST coordinator.  She quickly got everyone out of their daze.  Her excitement was extremely contagious and got everyone hyped up for the video that was to start at 10:30 AM.

There were a couple of talks that focused on gracious professionalism, safety, as well as a very good presentation by Dan Klein, who showed everyone the amazing progression of computer software over the years. Then it was time to start the kickoff video.  Even though there were some technical difficulties, the video finally began to work smoothly.

Everyone in the room was sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for the reveal of the game for this year’s competition.  There were a number of clues in the video including the Egyptian background, the FIRST shapes imitating frisbees, and the rock climbing wall.  There was a slight hum of whispers as people were attempting to put the clues together.

The game was revealed, and no one was saying a word.  Everyone’s eyes were fixed to the screen as the video gave the specifics of the game and the field elements.  Afterwards, everyone broke out into groups to discuss the rules of the game or anything else the teams were concerned about.  Our girls, however, grabbed their lunches and went over to our normal meeting room to discuss ourselves.

We started off with a discussion about the rules and the field set up so everyone was clear about what this year’s game was exactly.  After that, we all focused on strategizing and planning out what we wanted our robot to do.  It finally came down to the battle between a climbing robot and a shooting robot.  While the shooting robot could get us a lot of points, the climbing robot is very consistent.  The girls separated into 2 groups to discuss the pros and cons of each attribute.  One girl from each group stood up and tried to convince the other girls to side with them (See, we also learn valuable public speaking skills by being on a robotics team).

We all came to the conclusion that we wanted our robot to be able to have one strong attribute rather than be mediocre at a lot of different skills.  We also had to remember that we had to have a good functioning robot to meet our ultimate goal: be in the top 8 at the Pittsburgh regional.  Therefore, there is a lot more to building a good robot than just what it can do.  We also needed to take into consideration the time spent building and learning how to operate the robot itself.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there may be a perfect decision, but we don’t really know what it is.  We don’t have the time to figure out exactly what it is.  We only have six weeks to build this robot and it should be spent building a good working robot that could help us reach our goal, not trying to figure out the perfect answer and running out of time in the end.

It finally came down to the decision between a robot that would climb to the top of the pyramid and score 4 colored discs and a robot that would score 3 white discs during autonomous mode and 11 white discs into the top slot during the teleoperation period.  Basically, both scenarios would score around 50 points.  So which one did we go with?

Well, after an all around vote, we came to the final decision that we would go with the robot that….well….the vote was tied.  So you have to find out next time… 🙂