This was the “alliance” round. Three teams all working together. They had to direct their robots to move the scattered cones and cubes into the scoring zones. With each team taking a third of the court, Goffstown’s Max Rothwangl only had to focus on the pieces right in front of him. It was going well enough. All they had to do now was balance all three bots on the charging platform. Max had the bot halfway on the platform then everything stopped, the bot controls cut out, even the background music cut out. The RADAR glitch again, at the worst possible time. The bot’s tower for the arm gave it some balancing issues and it was slowly tipping off the platform.
The “Battle of the Bay,” put on by Alton High School on November 4th was an independent, off-season event for local robotics teams. The game mode for this event was called “Charged Up.” It was relatively straightforward. The game pieces, consisting of cubes and cones, needed to be picked up and moved into their specific zones. During the first round the bot had a fatal software error, a critical component outright died and stopped responding, leaving the bot dead in the water. After a mad scramble and help from courteous members of another team, the 501 was able to have the bot ready again for the alliance round. The teams had a plan ready and stuck to it. As stressful as it was, it was going smoothly until the RADAR malfunction. The RADAR is a brand new sensor network that connects all the bots to the referees and judges systems and allows for manual control. Of course, with new tech there are always unexpected issues. Earlier in the day the system completely stopped functioning for a few moments then came back. It wasn’t anything too serious, but it happened again at the worst time possible.
With barely any time left on the clock the bot was stuck halfway on the charging platform, slowly tipping over from the arm’s high center of gravity. After the fact Max claimed that the tower and arm design “helped as much as it hindered,” but ultimately acknowledged that its addition to the bot was a change for the better.
After a painfully long handful of seconds the system came back online and Max was able to get the bot on the platform without further incident. Even though the team missed most of the event due to the code crash, they did so well in the final round that they scored high enough to take home the victory.
The Battle of the Bay turned out to be an epic early year competition with a miraculous turn of events. Sofia Douglas recalled that the experience was “fun and very rewarding” and she recommends joining the team to anyone. It’s almost comical that this event wasn’t even an official on season event.