U^2 Tournament Play-By-Play

By Aarav, Anuhya, Krish, Jai, Sol, Tanvi, Alex, Vance, and Georgia

Task: Review our performance at the U^2 Tournament

Today, Iron Reign competed in our U^2 League Tournament. We won Think 1 and Inspire 2, advancing us directly to the North Texas Regionals competition on February 24th. Although we could not get V3 of Purple Pixel Eater(our robot) built in time for this competition, we performed well on the field and in judging. But, there will be a post-mortem that goes into more detail about our analysis and identifies areas of improvement. For now, this post will focus on a summary of our judging efforts and matches.

Judging:

Unfortunately, we did not practice our presentation as much as we should have the week before the competition, but a late judging slot gave us time to practice beforehand. Overall, our judging session was pretty strong, but we struggled with rambling too much and talking too quickly. This led to our judges not understanding everything we said and not being able to ask all the questions they wanted. We still got a solid number of judging panels in the pit though.

Matches:

Match 1: 88 to 40 win

We scored a 45-point auton, placing both the purple and yellow pixels and parking in the backstage area. Then, at the start of teleop, we initially waited for our opposing alliance to move before scooping up the purple pixel placed in auton and scoring it next to the yellow pixel. Then, we cycled multiple yellow pixels but regularly conflicted with our alliance partner. However, while crossing the stage door, we dropped our drone, which would continue throughout the day. Overall, we scored 7 pixels and 1 mosaic in teleop. In endgame, we did not hang because one of the skyhooks twisted up too early because of incorrect tensioning, and we lost our drone, so we could not score that either. It was a comfortable win, and we also decided that if we were ever allied with a push bot again, they could knock pixel stacks down and bring us pixels to score.

Match 2: 66 to 17 win

In this match, auton ran properly, but we got caught on the team element, leading to us losing our position and not scoring anything. Our team element was too stiff and did not slide properly, which we must fix. On a positive note, our alliance partner did manage to park. Then, we lost significant time at the start of teleop initializing our robot before the outtake stopped working, most likely because of something with the servo or lift. We lost the drone again, and in endgame, we hung. Overall, it was a solid win, but our performance left a lot to be desired.

Match 3: 68 to 64 win

We correctly placed the purple pixel in auton but missed the yellow one. Throughout the match, we struggled with poor coordination and rushed driving. We constantly rammed into the walls and collided with the rigging, leading us to lose our drone again. During intake, poor pixel placement and rushed attempts ended with us not entirely securing pixels. Our alliance team also descored a couple of pixels, which was unfortunate. In endgame, we hung. Our drive team struggled in this match and was under constant pressure from our alliance team. We need more support and direction from our coach to help our driver Krish focus and not have to strategize himself. Luckily, we squeaked out a narrow win.

Match 4: 64 to 63 loss

In a poor display of game awareness, we forgot to load our drone before the match. This could easily be rectified with a pre-match checklist. In auton, we scored purple but missed the yellow pixel. We struggled with driving and coordinating with our alliance partner in this match. Throughout the match, opposing robots constantly blocked our wing, limiting us to scoring only 4 pixels in teleop. In endgame, we missed hang and could not launch the drone because we forgot to load it before the match. After the match, we went to contest the match and advocated for the referees to penalize our opposing team for blocking our access to the intake. After much discussion, our opponent was penalized 20 points(two minor penalties), which was not enough for us to win the match, as we lost 1 point. Throughout this match, we observed that our outtake was moving too fast(leading to missed pixels). We also saw how our lack of flexibility with intake positions(we could not pick up from pixel stacks) hurt us in a match scenario since the wing was blocked off.

Match 5: 94 to 94 tie

In auton, we scored both the purple and yellow pixels. However, in teleop, we got our intake stuck on the wing tape, which made it difficult to intake pixels. Despite this, we scored 1 green, 1 purple, and 2 white pixels(just shy of a mosaic). In endgame, because of time-wasting and our driver pressing the wrong button, we missed hang. This was a major mistake since the match ended in a tie, and hanging would have gotten us the win. Issues like this indicated the strategy oversights we consistently made during this tournament. By the end of the qualifying matches, we were ranked 4th, going 13-1-1.

Match 6: 73 to 66 win

We were selected by the 2nd seed(22008 RoboBison Knowledge) to join their alliance for the elimination matches. In the first semifinal match, our auton was delayed, and we scored nothing. In teleop, yet again, our drone was dislodged while we traveled through the stage door. We picked up a green pixel from the wing and went to score a mosaic with the pixels our alliance partner had placed. Even though one of the skyhooks was tensioned wrong in endgame, we still managed to hang. We won the match and went up 1-0 in the semifinals. However, our alliance partner broke a servo during this match, which meant they would be out for the next match.

Match 7: 26 to 64 loss

In the 2nd semifinal match, our auton did not sense the team prop and thus scored the pixel in the wrong position. At the beginning of teleop, our drive team accidentally started our auton, which led to us wasting time and banging into the rigging. During the match, our struggle continued as we kept missing pixels when intaking from the wing. Even in endgame, hang did not work, and we lost the drone again. Overall, this sloppy match allowed the opposing alliance to even things at 1-1.

Match 8: 123 to 114 win

In the final match of the semifinals, we were partnered with RoboBision Knowledge. We missed both pixels in auton and accidentally ran into our alliance partner. However, in teleop, we scored multiple pixels(even though we missed a mosaic) along with our partner. In endgame, we hung and managed to launch the drone but it did not clear the field wall. We won due to a clutch set bonus we gained during teleop, sending us to the finals.

Match 9: 255 to 100 loss

This match turned out to be a tough loss. Our auton did not detect the team prop again, and we could not keep up with our opponents' cycle times. We started 35 seconds late in teleop and got penalties for going into our opponent's backstage and knocking over a pixel stack. We didn't hang, and the drone fell off again. After this match, we were replaced by the 2nd pick in our alliance for the 2nd match, which we lost. Regardless, we were delighted with our robot performance, finishing as the 1st pick of the Finalist alliance, which advanced us to Semi-Regionals.

Pit Interviews

Throughout all the robot action, we received 4 pit interviews from the panels for Design, Innovate, Connect, and Motivate. We discussed our plans to rebuild our robot and why we were not at that stage yet. We also discussed our team's non-technical parts.

All of this culminated in us winning Inspire 2 and Think 1 at the awards ceremony, which sent us straight to the North Texas Regionals. This gives us 4 weeks to build PPE V3 and get it working to advance to UIL and State. Stay tuned for our post-mortem post detailing our analysis of this event and highlighting a few key takeaways.