Maker Faire FTC-Quel Velocity Vortex by Timothy Wang From our experience from last year, I can say that the Maker Faire was a fun and exciting experience for my whole team. Once I got to the faire, I walked around the faire until I found the room for the FTC-Quel. When I walked in, I saw a variety of teams setting up for the competition, and I went to my pit and started working on the robot.
The first few matches in the first day started out good. At the end of the day, we ended up in 2nd place, right in front of RoboKnights and behind Team M. During the matches, we were able to shoot many particle balls, press many beacons, and place many cap balls. Our autonomous mode also didn’t have any major flaws, and it worked quite well every time.
The second day wasn’t as good as the first day’s performance. Majority of our team wasn’t able to attend, so I drove with the only other able driver there, Allen. Together, we performed similar to the first day, but not as precise and smooth, since we weren’t the main drivers. We went from taking a lead in 2nd place to 4th place behind RoboKnights.
Finally, it was time to chose our alliance partners in the finals. We weren’t able to chose since Team M had already chosen us. After the alliance choosings, Allen and I talked to our alliance partner’s drivers and we discussed about our robot’s capabilities. Allen and I were very impressed with the quality and innovation they put into their design, and it also was very sturdy.
On the final match, the tele-op mode started and we all raced to press beacons or shoot particle balls. Then, the amazing thing happened. There were ten seconds left on the timer, and Roboknights had already scored their cap ball and were trying to block and make sure that we couldn’t cap ours. Roboknights vigorously tried to spin the vortex, and we were almost going to make it. Then, at five seconds, the ball was at the very edge of the vortex, and was about to fall out, when Allen quickly drove forward and nudged the cap ball just enough to make it go in. We had won!
In the FTCQuel, we were able to compete against our former opponents in a more non-competitive background. As a result, many people in our team were allowed to experiment with different roles than they were used to - including driving, pit crew, and documentation.