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On Saturday, 17 November, Six Hyperactive Snowballs and a Cool Robot travelled to Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School for our first FLL 2001 competition. The team got a huge boost from our enthusiastic fans. (Click on any of the photos for a larger version.) |
| The rules allow only two team members to handle the robot during each round. During our last meeting, the team elected Brian and Pete as the robot wranglers for the tournament. | |
| During an early round, Brian sends the robot off on its first mission: to capture the medicine barrel (visible on the left side of the photo, balanced between the two playing fields). This is a critically important part of the round, because making the barrel fall on our side of the table gains 50 points for us and denies them to the other team. The top teams all had strategies for capturing the barrel quickly and reliably. | |
| The playing fields were very well situated, directly next to the bleachers with the first two rows of seats roped off, so that spectators were able to see the action. In other tournaments we've attended, this is often not true, as a wall of standing onlookers surrounding the tables makes it impossible for others to watch the match. | |
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At the end of the morning, our cool robot had scored 245, 250, 195, 280, 290, and 300 points in the first six rounds of the tournament. Each team's top five scores were averaged to determine the seeding for the afternoon double-elimination championship rounds. Our average score of 273 put our team (number 4) in second place, not far behind team 6 (the LRTs from Lunenberg, last year's state champions), and ahead of team 5 (Sharon Iced Eagles A). |
| One of the neatest tricks our robot does is when it picks up the ice core (dangling from the robot's arm in the photo), then follows the lines and raises two flags before neatly returning to base. Just in front of Pete, our barrel dumper is loaded and ready for the next mission. | |
| By 3 pm, the pairings for the afternoon's double-elimination tournament told the story. Each team began with an entry on the left-hand board; when it lost its first match, its team number was entered on the right-hand tree. A second loss eliminated it from further competition. Our first loss was a third-round defeat by Sharon Iced Eagles A, whose own first loss came in their match with the LRTs on the next round. Our match against team 14 (Sharon Iced Eagles B) started inauspiciously when our robot reached the medicine barrel first, but knocked it onto the other team's playing area. Defeat and elimination seemed likely, but our opponents did not retrieve the scientists, and we survived to face Sharon Iced Eagles A a second time. | |
Both the LRTs and the Sharon Iced Eagles A had constructed giant arms designed to reach across the table and capture the medicine barrel within the first second or two of the match, without leaving the base area (so that they could try again without a penalty if they missed). Our robot was very fast and accurate (thanks to the line-following algorithms it used), but could not possibly match the speed of either of these robots' falling arms. Our only hope was that our robot's accuracy could somehow beat our opponents' aim.
When our rematch with Sharon Iced Eagles A began, Brian calmly started our robot on its way to the medicine barrel, but the Sharon team hesitated for a second or two -- just long enough for our robot to capture the barrel! Pete and Brian executed the rest of the missions flawlessly, finishing with 45 seconds to spare (of the two-minute match period). The Sharon team had worked very hard and were worthy competitors, but their second loss meant they would finish in third place.
Finally, we faced the LRTs. We had very little hope of winning against them -- to have gained first place, we would have had to do so twice, since they had no losses. Their giant arm missed the medicine barrel on their first attempt, but they quickly reset and captured the barrel seconds before our robot reached it. Both robots performed well in the remaining missions, but there was no way to make up for the loss of the medicine barrel.
The LRTs will be competing again in the Maine state tournament on 9 December, and we wish them well -- they deserve it. Go LRTs!
| The tournament organizers provided awards for the top three teams and for a variety of outstanding achievements. |  |
| We were thrilled with our unexpected second-place finish as we posed for a team photo. We were also honored to receive the tournament's Technical Award, recognizing both the innovative physical design of our robot and the sophisticated programming that made it function so well. |  |
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Here's a closeup of the awards our team received. We look forward to our second (and final) tournament on 8 December at Bay Path Regional Technical High School in Charlton, where we expect to meet the Sharon Iced Eagles again. |
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