Wylie East Regionals Post Mortem

By Karina, Bhanaviya, Jose, Justin, Ben, Cooper, Mahesh, Shawn, and Trey

Task: Reflect on what went right and wrong at the regionals tournament

Iron Reign is so excited to be advancing to the World Championship. But there's no denying that across the board, we did not perform as well as we were expecting. Following the long day, first we feasted as per tradition. But then at a later time, we all sat down to discuss where things could have gone wrong, and found that in the weeks leading up to the regionals tournament, our team was already showing signs of underperformance. This is more of a long term issue that needs to be adressed, starting with in depth retrospection and a frank conversation among ourselves.

Preparation

Strengths

• We had more than two people packing
• Journal was printed and tabbed and color-coded and everything the night before
• We kind of had a packing list going
• The gamer station we made proved to be worthwhile

Weaknesses

• We did not check off of a packing list as we loaded the vehicles (we could have missed something)
• Very little dedicated drive practice and so coordination between the two drivers was lacking
• We goofed on printing the timeline that shows events we have gone to, professionals we have met with, progression of the robot, etc.

Opportunities

• log drive practice hours and scores
• Aim to have a code freeze so driver don't have to deal with unexpected changes
• Split the robot manual into two different documents: one that shows and summarizes each subsystem and one that lists step by step how to build TomBot
• Fix the loose broom heads on the hats (but this is definitely not a priority)

Threats

• Not having everything with us due to travel restricted packing

Judging

Strengths

• We got 3rd place Inspire, 3rd place Think, and 1st place Connect which we can probably say was due to the engineering journal and our presenting skills since our robot performance was not stellar
• At this point we've had a lot of practice
• Handing judges materials from our presentation box at the right times
• Manual demo of the robot was successful
• We got across all of our more important presentation material before the 5 minutes were up
• Anything that we didn't get to during the five minutes we were able to cover in questioning

Weaknesses

• Since we were tired, we sounded kind of low energy and unenthusiastic
• At the same time, we were talking super fast trying to get through all of our content
• There was not much interest in our robot demo

Opportunities

• Rework our presentation to focus on the most important information (at this point we have realized we will not have enough time to talk about everything we have done this season)
• Make good use of the questioning time - invite the judges during the initial 5 minutes to ask questions about our team's highlights after the 5 minutes are up

Threats

• The 5 minute time restriction
• Lack of sleep bringing down our energy levels

Pits Presentation and Conduct

Strengths

• Our pit setup was super clean with everything hidden away under table covers, and our posters and aquila
• We had people stationed at the pits at all times to receive any judges who had questions
• Some people were drawn to our pits because of our hats!
• People also came to our pits when we displayed match results on our monitor

Weaknesses

• We didn't have a good scouting strategy and the scouting team was also lacking sleep
• Not everyone got an opportunity to speak during pit interviews
• As far as we understand, we did not get any pit interviews from design focused judges (we need to sell this more during judging)
• Though displaying match results attracted people, it also created traffic in our pit area

Opportunities

• Have a working rotation of people at the pits, scouters, people watching matches, etc.
• Have a more active scouting team
• Redesign some of the older cross banners
• Still display match results but find a way to minimize the mess created by this

Threats

• Not having scouting
• Not making conversation with other teams/forming connections
• Poor pit organization
• Team members being off task in the pits

Robot Performance

Strengths

• Physically, the robot worked alright
• The foundation grabber worked
• Parking also worked

Weaknesses

• We did not do a good job demonstrating the components that did work
• We had to slap Snapdragon down multiple times on a stone before it would snap closed over the stone
• The polycarb base plate is heavily cracked and needs replacement
• While a lot of our autonmous functions worked in theory, they were untested, and so naturally they did not work
• In one of our matches we lost functionality of the arm because a wire came loose
• Capstone was never deployed
• The mounts for distance sensor was bent
• Drivers were unfamiliar with autonomous set-up

Opportunities

• Design a new 3D printed part for the gripper that triggers the snapping motion more effectively than the bent metal strip we have now
• Cut and bend a new polycarb base plate
• Better wire management
• Adding LEDs - make TomBot look more snazzy
• Add more sensor-assisted capabilities, such as stone retrieval

Threats

• Having to overcome the bad impression we gave at Regionals for the World Championship
• All the teams who have a super fast wheel intake

While there is a fair amount of time before the World Championship in Houston, we don't want to get too comfortable. We will be using the list above as a broad guide as to we should accomplish for the championship. We will be increasing the amount of afterschool meetings we have to develop autonomous and practice driving TomBot. The UIL tournament will serve as a good place to practice in a very realistic setting. Additionally, we are excited to be creating TomBot V2 for the World Championship, and seeing if we can create as iconic a reveal video as the previous year's.