Danbury Robotics Team 5150 had a challenging time at the Vex Robotics World Championship, but after overcoming some technical issues they finished strong, according to a report from high school technology teacher Erik Savoyski and the Team 5150 Advisor.
The E-team finished 55 out of 86 in the Math division after having lots of programming issues at the beginning. However, E-bot got better as the tournament went on, winning 4 out of their last 5 matches..
At the beginning, the robot would work autonomously and then driver control would cut out or not work at all. A combination of order of operations and a misplaced = sign in the code was one fault, plus a couple of other things made for a rough start.
D-team finished 23rd out of 86 in the Arts division.
As the tournament went on, friction was developing within one side of the robot, which caused the motors on that side to “brown out” or stop working for 5 seconds at a time, once so severely that a winnable match was lost.
It was partially due to the robot. While being inspected by TSA, it was was bent, probably when they shoved it back in the shipping container.
Nick Passaro, one of the founding members of Team 5150D from 2011 now with the NYIT college team came over to say hello, and jumped in with some expertise, and with a partial rebuild of that side they were back in business.
D-team unfortunately lost their last match 59-58, when the driver went to push a large ball into the goal zone with 3 seconds left, and flipped over.
D-team finished 14th in the world for Vex driving skills, an excellent statistic which we can carry into next year.
It was an excellent experience and an honor to compete at Worlds.
Thanks go out to my chaperones Jim Folino, Michael Hyatt, Michael Staib, Ginny McKinstry, Doron Efrat, and Jody Hiatt. Without them, there is no trip.