Day 2

Well its moving day and we needed to improve over yesterday.  Hopefully all of our alliance partners will show up today and help us out.  Yesterday our robot movements were much better due to replacing the joystick and reworking the left rear wheel as one roller was rubbing and it did not help when trying to go sideways or straight.  We started the day by attending the Mentor Breakfast where Woody discussed changes in how students are taught using electronic media, “robots”.  Woody says that the teacher’s roles will be changing to cover the human characteristics required of teaching while the knowledge portion will all be automated.

Competition was intense throughout Day 2.

It took a while but we finally scored this barrel.  The scoring platforms and waste noodles made accurate movements difficult to do.

We were really good at scoring the coopertition totes.

Lee’s son worked on this robot.  It was the only one using hooks.  I think we made the right choice.

Discussing strategy after a match and waiting for results.  Ranks were updated for each team after each match.

Competing teams were allowed to sit in the first three rows.  We took advantage of this all day.

During our lunch break we helped the City of St. Louis by holding up the arch.

These two are working together to give the others a break until the construction workers get back from lunch.

Then its right back to our next match.  But first the judges were busy decorating the field during lunch.  Nancy was a volunteer on Carver where they created their own arch.  It took a while for the volunteers to figure out how to disassemble it.

How did they get that bent noodle in the can?

Some teams repeatedly made two or more stacks of six Totes with Barrels and Noodles.

Any time the officials hover over the laptop tensions rise.  Were is Scott when you need him.  Luckily this was just a small adjustment to our camera image size because we rebooted.  Didn’t happen again and don’t know why we lost it this time.  Mark?  Anyone?

Placing a limp noodle into a barrel is not as easy as shooting fish.

Scoring a can and a noodle onto a small stack of totes.  We improved throughout the day.

Coming back to the pits from a recent match.

At one time we made it as high as 26th.  We made constant improvement throughout the day.

A view from Newton looking over at Carver.  The Edward Jones Dome is a huge place.

We got this bird one too many times.  In addition to the game there are many other games going on.

Our students interacted well with others.

Being a team Mascot is a hard job but someone has to do it.  There are a few perks too.

Shrek helped show us the ropes.  This guy dances up a storm which is kind of difficult when your costume doesn’t let you see side-to-side, you can hardly move your arms, and people keep bumping into your tail.

You want me to perform in a parade in front of thousands of people in the Edward Jones Dome?

OK.

Day 2 was a long day.  We made a great move from 62nd out of 76 to 30th.  Our team started dreaming about being in the Quarter Finals.  We had a shot.  We scored better than Team 3015 Ranger Robotics at 51st.  We held our own with an average score of 128 which compared well with Team 191 X-Cats’ 121.