East Massachusetts State Championship

     Our team had been working three times a week for a non-stop, 4-8 hour session since the Newton qualifiers in preparation for the State tournament on Dec 15th. Now the day we had been looking forward to had finally come. We reached the venue around 7:30 am and quickly set up the pit - an area where we relax in between robot matches and judging sessions, keep our stuff, and explain to other people and teams what our science project was about. Then we started looking around for other teams we had met through out the season. In the past few months, we had made friends with other teams from Ashland, Acton, and Newton.We quickly identified where each of these teams were and chatted with them for a bit. After some time, our coach left for the coaches meeting while we explored other team projects which included interesting topics such as materials for astronaut space suits, a spinning growth chamber to grow plants in space etc.

     Before we knew it, we were up for the robot game. During the robot game, we have 2.5 minutes to demonstrate our pre-planned tasks to solve certain missions on a pool table sized board. The goal was to score the most number of points possible (each mission carried certain number of points) and only touching our robot(s)(Curiosity/Opportunity) inside a small area called base. In order to solve the missions, we equip the robot with attachments when it is in base and run the program that completes the task.

     As a team we decided to run the robot game in pairs. We first sent Anagha and Trisha to run the robot match. Only two participants are allowed at the table at any given time. We had programmed our robot to score up to 232 points but the first match didn't go our way. Because of changing times and robot angling and mat conditions, we only got bout 160 points which would have been good at the qualifiers but not at the championship game. We headed back to the pit disappointed but then our coach came and gathered us for a pep-talk.  He said, ''there is no shame if the robot did not behave the way you programmed it. The only mistake is to not learn from it and improve the next time".

   

     During the second robot game Ragav and Anish were chosen to try their luck at the match. This time after our coaches pep-talk we were riled up and focused but this match did not go very well. One of our mission failed to work again and we landed up scoring about 124 points Even with that misfortune, we were still in 4th place. We still had some kinks to work. For the third robot match, we sent Trisha and Anagha again,. This time, they had better luck but still finished well short of our target, scoring 168 points. This was our highest score for the day. We moved up to 3rd position.

     During our next game we contemplated switching robots but decided to stick to Opportunity, which we have been using for the first three matches. This was our last chance before lunch at the robot game. Ragav and Anish went out but an error in the alignment caused us to redo one of our missions losing time. We landed up scoring 148 points, which was a little bit disappointing for us. We had an hour or so before our next round, so we took the time to catch up on the scores. Robosheen, the top robot game team at the qualifiers, was second in place with 273 points with Diesel a novice team in first place with their best score of 228 points. We had dropped to 7th place. While this could still allow us to qualify for championship, we clearly needed our best show in the next run. This made us feel very anxious. 

     We quickly ate lunch because next up we had our project judging. Every year a new topic is announced. In the project portion of FLL you have to identify a problem, along the guidelines of the topic, and build a feasible solution to solve it. After you came up with your project, you share it with as many people as possible to create an impact and to get advice. Finally you would present your project to a pair of judges during the tournament. This year's topic was Into Orbit so our project focused on the growing number of debris orbiting the earth. We created a pod satellite called ElectroMagnetic Pod for Removing Orbiting Debris a.k.a., EMPROD to remove the smaller but fast moving debris. 

     First in the judging sessions was project judging. This was our sweet spot. We had rehearsed this numerous times and were very confident. Not so surprisingly, we breezed through our well rehearsed lines. The judges were wowed when we told them we had a provisional patent on our solution. After that we jumped right into Q & A time. The judges asked us interesting questions which we answered as best as we could. One question in particular, about our thruster technology, got us thinking on  what more we could do.

     Next we had our technical judging where the judges assessed the concepts we had used to build our robot and program. We had thoroughly described our robot and attachments and finished describing our program layering system.  It was then time for us to go to the core values judging.

     Core values makes you think about how you could improve your team dynamics by having the judges give you a team building exercise. We had prepared a short presentation to give to the judges about our team dynamics. After we finished this we then attempted the core values activity. The judges told us to discuss as a team before attempting it. The second time around we managed to plan and execute well and complete the task.

      We came back to the pit with our team revved up for the final robot game. We decided that Anish and Ragav should go out one more time. During the match everything went smooth. The only task that did not work was the Crater Crossing as the agent craft fell short of crossing the bar. All other tasks worked flawlessly earning us 208 points, moving us to the 2nd position. We also realized that we weren't the only ones to have done better, the Day Dragons had done much better too! As we walked by their table we congratulated them for doing so well.

After the last robot game round, while the judges were deliberating, the organizers held a fun lightning round. We were paired up with the team that had 2nd last points on the table and together we had to score as many points as possible in 1.5 minutes. This required us to discuss with the other team and work together. It was fun seeing what other teams had come up with to solve the same set of missions but at the end, we did not make the top 8 teams in the lightning round. 

   At the end of the day we had a great experience interacting with the other teams. During the award ceremony, we received the 2nd place award for the robot game and the 3rd place Championship award for overall good performance in project, robot and core value categories. We went home happy to be rewarded for all our hard work and are motivated to do even better next time.