Apple Pi Runner Up at Connecticut Regional

FIRST Team 2067, Apple Pi Robotics, competed this weekend in the Connecticut Regional at the Hartford Convention Center. What an exhilarating event! On Friday, we honed in on our shooting skills, making the best of what we had learned from Thursday’s practice rounds and the WPI Regional to improve our game. As of the last qualification match on Friday, we had accumulated the highest number of points during autonomous (no human controllers) mode out of all the teams there. By the end of the competition, we had developed autonomous coding that allowed us to pick up additional Frisbees and score them, which allowed us to take advantage of the increased number of points awarded during this time period. Once Friday’s matches were over, we seeded seventh out of fifty-six teams, granting us the opportunity to choose our alliance members for the elimination rounds. The top eight seeds are given the opportunity to choose who they would like to compete with during elimination. We moved up to the sixth alliance position after another top eight team was chosen, and after careful consideration of our scouting data, we selected Team 230, the Gaelhawks, and Team 4134, Amsterdam, to compete with us. Team members watched in anticipation as Apple Pi, the Gaelhawks, and Amsterdam progressed from quarterfinals, to semifinals, and to the final matches. Despite a two-point loss during the quarterfinals, we came back and won our next two matches. Additionally, during the semifinals, excellent performances by our alliance in autonomous and tele-operated modes allowed us a victory over the strong second alliance team, which including Team 1699, the Robocats; Team 177, the Bobcats; and Team 175, Buzz Robotics. Although we did not win the regional, we enjoyed playing alongside teams 230 and 4134, both of whom displayed their best efforts. We congratulate the winning alliance, which was comprised of Team 20, the Rocketeers; Team 195, the Cyber Knights; and Team 95, the Grasshoppers.

Our outstanding performance at this regional was enabled not only by a well-built robot, but also by dedicated team members working continuously to enable our success. Throughout the entire competition, we were astounded by the amazing performances by our drive team, who included our driver, Evan; our operator, Andrew; our coach, Emily; and our human player, Sam. Evan’s maneuvering around defensive robots was critical to our speed, and he positioned our robot in the correct spot for harvesting, shooting, and hanging time and time again. Andrew worked in sync with Evan’s driving to shoot Frisbees and perform other important robot functions. Emily excellently coordinated communication for the drive team within and outside of competition, and Sam quickly inserted Frisbees into the robot and had an impressive throwing arm for hurling Frisbees at the competition’s end. Moreover, the stars of our media team were Whitney and Amy, both of whom documented our robot and drive team’s amazing performances during the event. Whitney had the important task of filming Team 2067’s matches, while Amy captured up-close snapshots of our robot in action. Finally, Virginia, Meghan, and the members of the scouting team undertook the momentous task of scouting other team’s performances in the hope of being able to choose alliance members, which proved to be crucial during later alliance choosing. Virginia and Meghan worked tirelessly to ensure that we had each team being scouted at every match they played in, which was no small task. We also were grateful to have the repeat assistance of Team 558, the Robo Squad, with scouting and data analysis.

Apple Pi is extremely proud of the performance during this competition, made possible by dedicated work throughout the build season and the hard work of students and mentors. We were pleased to end our official competition season on a high note at Hartford.
…………………………………………………………… by Megan Burke