We went into the Utah Regional a Rookie Team, but we certainly didn’t come out a rookie team.

Thursday Night

Thursday night five team members - Eric Hall, Kepler Sticka-Jones, Declan Van Uitert, Tanner Larson, and Chris Clyne - arrived at the Maverik Center in West Valley to prepare the pit for our first year in the FIRST Robotics Competition. This process included bringing the bagged robot in on a cart, bringing all the tools necessary, making sure everything which needed a charge was either charging or charged, and assembling a stand for our banner so that other teams knew who we were and who was sponsoring us.

Friday

In the morning the entire team arrived at the Maverik Center with a pit ready for action. First order of business was to remove our robot - Rosie - from her bag and run her through inspection. After a chaotic process of ensuring the firmware of Rosie’s Power Distribution Panel and the Driver Station were up to date we were ready to check that Rosie was ready to run and go to the field for the beginning of Qualification Matches.

However, our initial checks proved that Rosie had a few issues which had to be resolved. Rosie’s software would crash whenever the driver attempted to move her arm, the autonomous mode was broken beyond belief, the wiring of some of the power regulators was very loose, and bolts showed a need for tightening. However the team got to work and Rosie was ready for the first practice match of the day; the team was one of the first on the field driving.

In between trips between the field and the pit we would make trips to the practice field where we attempting to perfect our autonomous mode. Here we would tweak coefficients in our code to ensure that encoders were measuring distances correctly when moving. This functionality allowed us to hardcode distances and degree measurements we wanted Rosie to drive in a path. Because of all of this Rosie had two approaches to autonomous mode; first when placed in front of a static obstacle Rosie would drive 200 inches and stop waiting for teleop, second when placed in front of the low-bar Rosie would follow a predefined path to drive to the tower and attempt a low goal.

This process of setting goals and testing everything repeated throughout the day as we went through the ranks - ending the day ranked 14 out of 38 teams competing.

After qualification rounds concluding the majority of the team took their seats for the Awards Ceremony, while Team Captain Eric Hall stood in line with all the other team captains waiting to picked for an Alliance. To our relief the captain of Texas Torque - Team 1477 chose us and RoboBroncs - Team 3374 to join them in Alliance 6.

With the excitement of making it into the final rounds the team headed home in hopes of getting sleep - a futile effort for many on the team - in preparation for the the last day of the regional competition.

Saturday

Saturday proved to be a whirlwind of absolute chaos and excitement. Right as soon as everyone arrived Rosie and her drive team were called to queue up for the 3rd round of the day. While this meant that the drive team missed the opening ceremony - it allowed us time to prepare with our alliance on how we going to tackle the upcoming match. This gave us the foundation in our alliance which allowed us to go undefeated in the final bracket until the final two rounds against Alliance 1 - made of Team Appreciate - Team 2468, Alberta Tech Alliance, and the First Year Raven - Team 3166 from The Waterford School in Sandy, UT.

Although our Alliance didn’t win it all everyone in the alliance won awards allowing them to go to Nationals in St. Louis.