ACME attended our third qualifier this weekend.  Since we already qualified for Nor Cal Regionals this tournament was all about practice and gaining some experience.  The drive team was hoping to become more familiar with the controls and commands, the software team was anxious to see the results of auto and the scouting team was kept busy gathering data on the teams during the matches.

This was the robot we took to competition.  You can see the dump bed which dumps the Glyphs into the Crytobox (the blue thing with the columns).  On the side you can see the jewel arm, used to knock the jewel off of the jewel stand.  Below you can see our intake, made of two compliant wheels and two core hex motors to suck in the Glyphs.

During the matches we had a lot of exciting rounds.  Besides a new design to test, it was Clara and Emma’s first time drive coaching.  They were joined alternately by Kellen, Oren, Kelly and Shawn, all drivers.  The pit crew was Ben and Kelly, who stayed at the pit to answer Judge’s questions and to hold down the fort.  John, Clara, Emma and Shawn were this tournament’s scouters and remained in the stands to collect info on the teams competing.

At tournaments, teams play five matches each before finding out if they have made it into the semi-finals.  As it turns out, we were the top team in the matches, meaning we got to pick our alliance partners first.  We chose team 5214, Tech Support.  They had an awesome robot that could fill a Cryptobox in under a minute and a half.  They were very supportive of our alliance and together we hold the fourth highest score in the world!

This was the first time ACME has ever won First Alliance.  We were over the moon when we won and couldn’t have done it without our alliance partners.  Northern California Regionals are tentatively scheduled for the end of February.  We hope you will keep checking our website for more updates and please follow our Facebook page.

GO ACME!!!!