White Bear Lake Robotics

Our second day of competition has been fast-paced and exciting! We competed in five qualification matches yesterday. We tied two of the matches 0-0 and won the other matches 1-0, 3-0, and 5-0. We even played a match where we were the only robot on our alliance, and there were three robots on the other alliance, and we scored a goal in that match!

In between matches, we were busy fixing our kicker to run on a chain drive, fixing the drive chains and chain tensioners, working on our autonomous program, and trying to find time to test everything. We were also taking time to talk with the teams on our alliances to figure out a strategy for the match.

Now we're back for day three of competiton, and we're ready for another day of excitement! Good luck to all the teams competing at all of the regionals this weekend!

We are in the heat of competition at the Minnesota Northstar Regional! We had a few setbacks on our first day of competition, but we are back and ready for action!

We had to completely rework the controls of our kicker mechanism when we got to the regional, and we are still working on debugging some of the programming for it. We also had to do some work on the robot frame and bumper attachments. It was a long day in the pit, but we passed inspection yesterday evening and got out to the field bright and early for our first qualification match today.

We tied our first match with a score of 0-0, and we are currently continuing to debug the kicker code and fix a problem with one of our drive chains so we can turn more easily.

Stay tuned for more updates as the competition unfolds!

Wow how time has flown! Seems like only yesterday that we were crating up Dr.Robotnik...

Well in the Post-Season/Pre-Comp. period we've been busy! We have made more than 400 buttons with our new team-owned button maker. We will be handing these buttons out at the competition. We've also been trying to squeeze in as much driver practice as possible with our 2008 robot, Schnell Bahn, which has the same mechanum drive system as Dr. Robotnik. Our team driver, Claire appreciated this practice time, and our programmers appreciated the feedback from driving practice so they can tweak the code a little. We have also been talking with some other teams and doing a bit of pre-competition scouting as well as getting our name out there (which is important to do in this competition).

So tomorrow night we have our final meeting before competition, and all that's left now is to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s. We are ready to BREAKAWAY! We'll see you at the Minnesota North Star Regional!

Here are some quotes about science and technology, and life in general, for you to enjoy as we count down the days until the Minnesota Northstar Regional (there are 14 days left until the regional, in case you were wondering):

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• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!"  but "That's funny..." 
• -Isaac Asimov
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• A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
• -Albert Einstein
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• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
• -Albert Einstein
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• I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
• -Thomas A. Edison
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• Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
• -Thomas A. Edison
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• Everybody has to be able to participate in a future that they want to live for. That's what technology can do.
• -Dean Kamen