FIRST WI Regional
Team 2500, Herobotics, attended their first robotics competition of the year on March 11 to March 13 in the U.S. Celluar Arena in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The competition was called Breakaway. The objective of the game is to score soccer balls into your own goal. The only way to maneuver around the game field is to construct a robot that is able to drive under the tunnels or to design it to drive over the bumps which split the fields into three different sections. In each match, two alliances face each other, each alliance composing of 3 teams from different high schools that have been predetermined. On the first day of competition, it was a day each team to prepare for the matches by making sure their robot passes inspection and full practice with their robot to make sure it is fully functional. The team made modifications to their wheel design and program the day before to make sure the kicker is working properly. The competition was full of action on and off the field. Right after a match the robot is pushed through the crowds in the pit area. Similar to NASCAR, the robot’s battery is charged and and maintaince work is done so the robot will be prepared for the next match. Other than driving and building the robot, members of the robotics team act as ambassador’s as they expressed the off season community out reach which is done by the team as Herobotics tries to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Scouters on the team go out and speak with other teams to learn about their robot’s strengths and weaknesses which will help determine which teams they should choose to join their alliance. Outside the arena, the team met up with the robotics team from Edina, The Green Machine, and went out to eat at an Italian resturant called Buca di Beppo. The two teams bonded and shared information about robots and future plans. On another evening the teams from the Wisconsin Regional came together at the Milwaukee School of Engineering for a team social. It was a night of games and sports as students got together to play basketball, volleyball, dodgeball and games. The Herobotics ended up placing 40th out of 50 with a record of 4 wins, 5 losses and 2 ties.
2010 season "Breakaway"
This year’s competition is called Breakaway. This year’s robotic competition will be using a soccer ball that they can either kick or roll into the opponent’s goal. The goal of the game is to get as many balls as possible into the opponent’s goal. 1 ball is put closest to the opponent’s goal, 2 balls are put in the middle zone and 3 balls goes in the zone at the far end of the field. You can score anywhere on the field. Robots get bonus point hanging or climbing the tower and the tower is a platform that the robot can hang itself from or climb on it by itself. You get bigger bonus points if you’re lifted on the tower and your partner’s robot hangs on your robot. The match is 2 minutes and 15 seconds long. The field is 27 by 54 feet and it has guardrails and alliance walls. There are 6 robots on the field. The opposing teams are blue and red. To get points you can score the ball in the opponents goal for 1 point, the robot can be elevated on the tower or platform for 2 points or the robot can be suspended from another robot for 3 bonus points.
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BEFORE F.I.R.S.T.
The team was originally a small robotics club that could only tinker with a few robots donated to us from the University of Minnesota. At this time, we hadn’t experienced anything on the level of FIRST and weren’t very active in the school. Original hopes were to move the club into the Battlebots competition but, team founder Ms. Jill Johnson, decided to search for funding for the team to compete in FIRST. She felt that FIRST would be a more enriching program and also more beneficial for the students involved in the future. After making connections and finding a pool of money, Herobotics Team 2500 was born.
2008
The year 2008 was the very first year in which the Herobotics team competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition. We did not know what to expect since no one on the team had experienced such a large scale competition. As we opened the first kit of parts at the Kick-Off at the University of Minnesota, we were astonished by the technology which was available to us. The build season brought the team a great deal of challenges, the strongest of which was finding a workshop. Having no school area other than the hallways to work, we hauled our robot-in-progress to the Bakken Museum’s workshop. After building was done for the day, we crammed all of our materials into our team mom’s car and returned to the school to put everything away. This was a very time consuming way of building, but we did get everything done in the six weeks provided. After the build season, we competed in our first competition at the 10,000 Lakes Minnesota Regional competition in Minneapolis. We performed surprisingly well for a first year team and all alliances that we were a part of valued our unique strategy. The team was a selected to form alliances with Team 2227 and Team 1987 and we competed in the quarter finals. The final result of the 2008, 10,000 Lakes Regional for the Herobotics was 8th place with a 6 wins and 5 losses. This being our first competition, we were very excited and our enthusiasm was definitely recognized when we earned the Chrysler Team Spirit Award. Our initial goal was to just have a robot that would move. We had no idea that we would place anywhere in the top ten!
2009
After our top ten finish and Chrysler Team Spirit Award win in 2008, we all knew we had achieved something great. Going into the season, we were determined to build off of a strong rookie season. We were confident that this was their year to make it to the national competition in Atlanta, Georgia.
After seeing that the robotics team was successful, recruitment in 2009 increased. Being a second year team meant that there were now new things that we needed to try and accomplish. During the building season, the team wanted to work on building a more technically advanced robot and because of this goal, we added pneumatics to our robot in this year. We also worked heavily on our Chairman’s Award submission and other community service outreach projects especially with the Girl Scouts.
We competed in two separate regional competitions. The very first competition of the year was the Wisconsin Regional which was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The team shared a bus with the Edina Green Machine team to the Wisconsin Regional. We had a lot of problems with our autonomous programming and also with passing inspection. It took the entire first day of the competition to manipulate the robot to meet the constraints of the competition. During the 2nd day of the competition, the team was trying to figure out the most effective combination for the drive team and it took several matches to designate the human player to score the orbit balls. On the 3rd day of competition, our lead driver fell ill and another team member, who had no prior experience of driving the robot, took over as co-pilot. The team designated this competition as a practice regional as many aspects of the team, game, and strategy had to be resolved before moving on to the 10,000 Lakes Regional. The Herobotics ended the Regional with 3 wins and 5 losses. We had mixed feelings about our performance, but we knew that we would perform better in our hometown.
In Minneapolis, the team worked to configure a new game strategy and the outcome of our brainstorming was the addition of a dumper on the robot. When we arrived at Williams Arena, the first thing on everyone’s mind was to rush to the pit area to unpack the robot, in order to install the newly engineered dumper. The team broke up into 3 groups. One group unpacked the crate, another organized the pit and the third worked on installing the dumper. There was a mad scramble to get everything organized and installed so there would be enough time to have a test run with the newly installed dumper. New strategies were implemented and altered every match which was a cause for concern as one effective game plan was never decided upon. The Herobotics team ended up with a record of 2 wins, 5 losses and a tie. To summarize it, we didn’t have a very good competition IN the arena, but outside of the match area, 3 students from the Herobotics team were putting on a presentation in front of a panel of judges for the Chairman’s award. These team members told the judges about all of the work that we do in the community inspiring children in the community to try out robotics regardless of their cultural backgrounds or gender. As we were anxiously waiting in the crowd during the awards ceremony, we lost the Team Spirit Award, and after that we didn’t have any real hopes for winning any other awards. When the judges announced that the winner of the Engineering Inspiration Award was our team, Team 2500 Herobotics, we were stunned. The team burst up with excitement as we were not aware of the nomination of the award. We were so happy that we had won something that we didn’t even realize that we were qualified for the FIRST Robotics Championship in Atlanta, Georgia.
The first thing that came to mind when we were preparing for the championship was, “How are we going to get there?” The mentors and students were brainstorming and calling up new sponsors trying to find funding for transportation. Luckily, we found a new sponsor in Medtronic who helped pay for the team’s flight to Atlanta. Many of the students on the team had never been on a plane, so emotions ranged from anxiety to excitement. As we entered the Georgia Dome, there was a sea of booths which housed various FIRST Robotics team from all over the world. The competition was intense because of the competitors’ vast experience. Every team which made it to the championships each went through a tough trial to earn their spot. The Herobotics team knew we were underdogs in the competition, but we were determined to climb up the ranks and prove our toughness. Although we weren’t the greatest team there, we viewed it as a chance to learn from all of the other teams across the world. We noticed that not many team numbers were in the 2,000’s and we felt very grateful that we had the chance to experience the competition. The Herobotics team competed in the Curie division at the 2009 FIRST Robotics Championship with a record of 2 wins and 5 losses.
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