A team of students from Gloucester, Virginia (home of Peace Frogs) was invited to Atlanta, Georgia to compete in a robotics tournament. Peace Frogs was thrilled to be a part of their journey - which is cataloged here through these wonderful blog posts. Enjoy!
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
10:00 p.m.
We are currently on our way to Atlanta, and our approximate position is right outside of Richmond. The whole team showed up at the Thompson’s between 7:00 and 7:30 to not only pack the van, but all of us, with the exception of Jordan’s dad, and the Deans, will be driving in the Hamilton’s van all the way down to Atlanta. Surprisingly, we were able to leave at 9:00, which was our goal. We had a lot of the family members show up to help us get everything packed, and everyone seems pretty excited about the trip so far. We are going to drive through the whole night, and Carson’s dad, with his experience driving trucks for UPS, will be driving the van and trailer through the night, getting us there sometime Wednesday morning. We are looking forward to having a great time, and we are hoping at not only performing well in the competition, but actually completing our Rescue Atlanta outreach. All the team members are going to try and get some sleep on the way down there, so that we will be ready for to compete, but since none of us are really sleepy right now, we are watching Flyboys.
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
10:00 a.m.
We drove through the whole night, and most of us were able to get some sleep on the way down. We arrived at Rescue Atlanta around 9:30, and we are currently unloading the trailer that we were able to fill with supplies for the homeless in Atlanta. After we finish unloading, we are going to help not only sort all of the 11,200 items that we brought, but also help with distributing some of the lunches and ministering to the homeless. We have all gotten fairly excited about this, and we have gotten a great response for only having 3 weeks to do anything. We tried to reach people through emails, letters, and even facebook! We have gotten one of the most amazing responses any of us have seen, and we even had to get a bigger trailer since we have received so many donations. After we finish here, we are going over to the pits and unloading all of our robot parts.
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
5:00 p.m.
Currently, we are in the pits, unloaded and ready to go. We were able to successfully deliver everything to Rescue Atlanta, and while we did not get a chance to actually work with any of the homeless or do anything with the lunches, we were able to get a full tour of their facilities (a converted Coca-Cola syrup factory) and see some of their team in action. We were also able to successfully sort all of the supplies we brought, and get most of them ready as handouts. Our robot has been working fine so far, and we have been testing it and running everything making sure that it is ready. We have also been working on our scouting; actually going out and getting to know the teams, getting pictures of their robots, and making sure we have something on all of them. The competition looks like it will be a lot stiffer this year, and infinitely more hard than the regional competitions. While it is not as bad as we expected, it is still going to be very hard. We are going to a place called The Varsity tonight for dinner, and then after that, we are just going back to the hotel and just hang out.
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
12:00 p.m.
We all met in the hotel at 7:00 this morning and walked to the Dome, arriving around 8:00. We were in the second match of the day, so we have to ready to go up as soon as the opening ceremonies are done. So far everything has gone fairly uneventful and the robot is working fine. All of our team members are getting more and more excited and are really looking forward to finally competing. One of the advantages we don’t have this year is our main mentor, Nathanael. Last year, he was the one that let us know exactly what we were doing wrong, and what needed to be fixed. He was the one that would do the debriefing coming back from each round, and his main job at a competition is to keep us focused. This year, he had an engineering conference to go to, and while he really wanted to come, he was not able to make it. We are really missing him and Julia, our captain, but we knew this was coming, so we have been able to account for them to a certain degree and as a team, we are all picking up the slack that has been left. Our first match is right after lunch, so we are hoping that we will be able to do fairly well.
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
7:00 p.m.
Today, we were able to win all of our rounds. We had three scheduled for today, and then three more tomorrow, and we are hoping to do just as well tomorrow as we did today. Tonight, we are ordering pizza and having a small team meeting with everyone. We haven’t had any problems with the robot so far, and we are very pleased with it. Julia has been with NASA Knights, her FRC team, and so far, we have been able to operate without her being with us. Our training before we came here is paying off, and we all seem to know exactly what we are supposed to do and when we are supposed to do it. We had a minor team meeting, and by minor, I mean not only a subset of the real meeting, but only the team members attended it. We decided to switch the second driver with some of the other members that wanted to drive. Everyone is in the best of spirits and we are looking forward to three more wins tomorrow, putting us very near the top.
Friday, April 17th, 2009
8:00 a.m.
The team just arrived at the Georgia Dome this morning, and we are looking to win a couple more rounds today. We have had lots of people express an amazing interest not only in our first robot, but the second robot as well. We have been in the top ten teams throughout the whole competition, and we are hoping to continue on and take first place. The team is working as usual, and we are doing better than we ever have at any competition before this. The robot has kept up and is running like a dream, with nothing going wrong.
Friday, April 17th, 2009
2:00 p.m.
We just finished alliance selection and while we were not one of the teams picking, we were able to get into the fourth alliance. Today was not as successful as yesterday, since we lost one of rounds today, which put us slightly behind in the ranking. Also, we were not able to get as high on the list as we would have liked, since we were not able to get the ranking points we would have liked too. Also, in two of our rounds, our robot did not work properly, and while we were able to fix all of the problems, we couldn’t do it in time for the final match so that all the teams could see that we worked. And while we were not able to get with the teams that we had hoped for, we are just happy to be in the final rounds. Julia actually did come over and in about three minutes, she was able to locate the root of our problem, and tell us how to fix it. Now, while we had wanted to avoid having that happen, it did and she was able to help us successfully. We are looking forward to hopefully succeeding in placing in the finals. If we just make it past the first volley of rounds, we will be to were we got eliminated last year.
Friday, April 17th, 2009
4:00 p.m.
For us, the competition is now over, and all that remains is the closing ceremony. We competed in the quarter-final rounds, and were eliminated. However, we are just glad that we have made it this far. Although we were among the first to be eliminated, we are still satisfied with our performance and the very fact that we were in the top 24 teams from around the world! While this years season is now over, and the robot will only serve as a showpiece for robotics, we have high hopes for next year, and we have already begun to plan our trip back here to Atlanta, only next time, we intend to win. All in all, this year was very successful, and I think everyone learned a lot, and as a team, we learned many skills that will never be forgotten.
