2009 First Robotics Granite State Regionals

This year's First Robotics Competition Granite State Regional was from the 26th to the 28th. Thursday was mainly for the teams to uncrate their robots, make finishing touches and test drive on playing surface. Friday was the first actual day of competition. In order to rank the teams as accurately as possible, there was a little bit over 40 matches played. Each robot participated in around 5 or 6 matches with 5 other randomly selected robots. Saturday was the wrapping up of the seeding matches and the start of the playoffs. After lunch, an alliance process started where the top 8 teams selected their two alliance partners in order to perform at full potential in the matches.

This years game was Lunacy.



Because of the slippery playing surface, thursday was a very important day for the teams to develop and fine-tune driving techniques. To occupy time, I either watched the practice rounds or did scouting. Essentially, this was walking around in the pit and asking teams about their robots.

Here were some of the best robots we scouted or observed in competition



Our team got eliminated in the semi-finals becuase the circuit board connections to the collector were fried. Our alliance probably would have advanced if this did not happen. Here was the video of the final match of the day.



The whole weekend/half week was worth attending, especially as a first year. Matches got really repetitive and boring after a while, but this time could be spent wandering about in the pit or scouting. As the match was at Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, we got to wander around New Hampshire's largest city for food as well. If I hadn't slept in on saturday, I might have gotten my hands on some "fetus-sized" calzones. We came across some fassive grammar mail, which I seem to be unable to rotate.