U League Tournament Review

By Anuhya, Aarav, Krish, Tanvi, Jai, Ren, Nalin, and Fernando

Task: Conduct an Analysis on our Day at U League Tournament

Today we conducted an in-depth analysis of our performance at the U League Tournament on February 2nd. We discussed how presentations and interviews went, how coordinated our team was.

Logic and Preparation

The day started off shaky due to us not being 100% ready for our presentation and formal interview. First , we brought the wrong TV that was not able to be mounted on our CartBot. We then spent time trying to fix the TV and mount it, but it never turned on. This cost us time to run through a proper run through and clear our minds. While we did have great strides the week prior with our portfolio, our presentation was not fully made and edited the day before the competition, which was another major reason we were not fully prepared for our judging presentation. We packed better than former meets, but we also realized we need to include structural elements like REV rails for last minute fixes.

Judging and Preparation

Our presentation went mediocre according to team standards, due to the lack of planning there were occasional slip ups and stuttering throughout.The team also spoke too fast causing the judges to be a little overwhelmed with the amount of information we covered. Despite speaking too fast, we did not get through most of our motivate and connect slides. However, we live demoed our robot and gave out prototypes and parts, keeping the judges engaged. This caused the judges to ask several questions, even after 10 minutes.

Our pit interviews had some highs and lows as well. The connect and motivate panel were interested in all the outreach events we participated in throughout the season. They enjoyed how we went back to Travis to give back to the school where this organization first started. One revelation our team had with some of the panel's questions was that we needed to function more as a school team. They asked several questions about what we have done to increase recruitment at our school and if we are the reason some people decide to go to our school.

The Innovate and Design panel did not go as well. We did not have our robot as it was in a match, but they wanted to continue our discussion anyways. They did not show active interest in the robot or designs and showed minimal interest in sampler and speciminer. While we did go through some of the physical prototypes we had as well as GIFs of our robot working, we were not able to make a big impression on the judges making the interview lackluster and leading it to abruptly end.

During the Code panel, our main coder was not present since he was at one of the matches as a drive coach. He came in the middle of the interview which created an awkward restart to the interview and stopped the flow. Overall, the panel went well and we talked about how the Auton worked and future coding implementations.

Teamwork

We did not have assigned roles for every single person for the day of the tournament until the morning of, so it happened relatively quickly and no thought was given into what role would be best for each person. In spite of that, everyone was busy doing something. However, everyone being so far apart had its cons; for example, there were only around 3-4 people in each pit interview instead of the majority of the team. This led to a lack of team energy at the pit interviews. One area of improvement was that we could have bettered our scouting performance because we were only able to interview around 5 teams.

Taking the time to break down our day into different sections allowed us to reflect on how we acted individually and how it affected our team. It provided us the opportunity to learn and better ourselves for future competitions to ensure we use our time effectively during these stressful events. We plan to take this feedback and continue to improve.