This year, the THS robotics team faced many challenges internally, including the loss of all major team leaders from the previous year. Because of this, we chose to reuse last years robot, but make a few upgrades. This included creating a heavier steel weapon and stronger weapon axle which were made to address weaknesses we found out about in the previous year’s competition. However, this extra weight meant we had to cut down on weight somewhere else, which ended up being the frame. Holes were cut everywhere and we were still barely able to pass the weight inspection. In fact, our robot weighed in at exactly 15.000 lbs (exactly the limit). This extra weight in the front also meant that our drive barely had enough torque to slide on the front skid pad. Despite this, the team was very optimistic about our performance, owing in part due to the upgraded weapon. The first fight was a disappointment. We were against a vertical spinner robot, and after only a few hits, it managed to slip our weapon belt off of the pulley, thus rendering our weapon inoperable. The second fight went well and Free Hugs eventually won. The 3rd fight never actually happened because our opponent couldn’t repair their robot in time, so we got a free pass. Now with only the best half of the robots remaining, we were up against a previous champion, Overkill, a powerful horizontal spinner robot. After a few weapon on weapon contacts, our weapon died. However, because losing this match would guarantee our elimination from the tournament, we kept driving. The match finally ended with Overkill destroying our power switch. This put us in 7th place out of 16 overall, which happened to be the same result as the previous year. The team learned a lot from this tournament and because all of us will be back next year, we can employ what we learned in an all new design. Next year the team doesn’t want another 7th place, we want the trophy. We believe that it is not out of our reach if we can use what we learned to engineer a completely new design with stronger materials and more powerful electronics.
That’s a wrap on this year, more updates coming in the fall!