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  • Iron Eagles Advance to Regional Tournament
  • Qualifier Registration, Scrimmage review, & Robot Design Changes
  • Iron Eagles Advance to Super-Regional Tournament
  • Iron Eagles Advance to Regional Tournament
  • Congratulations and Next Steps

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Iron Eagles Advance to Regional Tournament

Posted on December 10, 2015 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

On Saturday, Dec. 5, two of the four Iron Eagles Robotics teams competed in the first FTC Qualifying Tournament of the season, held at Four Points Middle School. As the first qualifying event held in the entire state this season, this tournament had a small draw of just 19 teams, but many of the competitors were among the best teams in the state, including two who advanced to the elimination rounds at this year’s World Championship. Each team’s primary goal was to earn one of the six coveted advancement spots to the Regional Tournament next February.

Iron Eagles teams “Prime” and “Silverbolt” worked extremely hard to get ready for this early tournament, including many long nights and weekends since September. Like most of the teams at the competition, the Iron Eagles were scrambling to finish their robot builds just days (or even hours) before the tournament, so they approached the day with little preparation and a LOT of apprehension! But once they settled into the tournament, it became clear that they were going to be extremely competitive overall.

Prime opened up strong with a performance that shocked many of the competitors – they had the ONLY robot in the competition that was even capable of accomplishing the most difficult (and highest-scoring) challenge in this year’s game – climbing a steep 3-foot-tall “mountain” and successfully hanging the robot from a bar placed almost 5 feet above the ground! In addition, they were one of very few robots in this early stage of the season to have a program for the initial 30-second autonomous phase of the game, which they successfully completed in most of their matches. In their opening win, a small technical failure prevented Prime from achieving the full points for their robot-hanging maneuver, but they then stunned the competition by successfully completing this task in their next four matches, finishing the qualifying rounds undefeated and in second place, and with the tournament’s high score of 230!

Silverbolt entered the competition with less than an hour of total practice time with their new redesign, and they suffered two narrow losses in their first two matches. But the more they drove, the more they scored – and they swept their final 3 matches in convincing fashion to end the qualifying rounds in 5th place.

During the final “elimination rounds,” the top four teams select one alliance partner each to compete in a series of best-of-three matches to determine the tournament champion. Prime accepted an invitation from the top-ranked team, the Blue Chargerbots from the Texas School for the Deaf, and the 3rd and 4th place teams from Vandegrift High School (Viperbots “Hydra” and “Quad X”) also teamed up as the 2nd alliance, which then pulled Team Silverbolt into position as the Captain of the 3rd place alliance. Silverbolt chose a third “Viperbots” team from VHS (Team Snakebyte) as their alliance partner, and the final battles for tournament supremacy began. The Blue Chargerbots/Prime alliance easily swept their semi-finals match 2-0 against the 4th place alliance, as Prime again successfully completed their robot-hanging maneuver twice in a row. Team Silverbolt’s alliance split their opening games against the strong 2nd place alliance, but was eventually knocked out in the close rubber match.

The two top-ranked alliances then squared off to determine the tournament champion. Prime’s killer “robot hanging” maneuver made them the prohibitive favorite, as they had successfully completed this move in their previous 6 matches. But unfortunately, a loose screw resulted in one of their wheels falling off during the first game, and their alliance lost 31-24. After a quick fix, Prime came storming back, winning their second match 215-19, and they seemed poised to take the championship in the third “winner-take-all” game against the Viperbots alliance. But shockingly, they lost one of their drive-wheel chains and became stranded on the field, unable to score, and had to rely on the Blue Chargerbots to pull out the win for their alliance. But although the Chargerbots pulled off a nice scoring move with just seconds on the clock, their alliance fell in the final match by just a single point – 38-37!

Without being on the winning alliance, the only way for Prime and Silverbolt to advance was by winning one of the top judging awards – they had to either be one of the top 3 finalists for FTC’s top award, the Inspire Award, or they had to win the Think Award for best Engineering Notebook. As the initial awards were announced, it was clear that both Iron Eagles teams were admired by the judges – Prime won the PTC Design Award (with Silverbolt taking second), and Silverbolt also placed 3rd for the Rockwell-Collins Innovate Award. Silverbolt was also the first finalist for the critical Think Award, just missing out on a coveted advancement spot – which meant that both teams’ hopes for advancement hinged on them being chosen as one of the top 3 finalists for the Inspire Award. Fortunately, both teams were thrilled when their hard work and great performances were rewarded, as Prime was announced as the Inspire Award second finalist, and Silverbolt as the first finalist!

The next step for the Iron Eagles is to help our other two teams, “Optimus” and “Guardian,” qualify for the Regional Tournament at the next competition, to be held on January 16 at Connally High School. Good luck to both teams, and congratulations to Teams Prime and Silverbolt!

Qualifier Registration, Scrimmage review, & Robot Design Changes

Posted on November 9, 2015 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

Hi Team:

TOURNAMENTS
As you know, I attended the FTC Austin Coaches Meeting on Thursday, and I can now confirm that we will now have at least FOUR qualifiers here in Austin. There are only 3 teams in San Antonio who are NOT in leagues, so it makes more sense for those teams to come up to Austin to compete as opposed to setting up a qualifier down in San Antonio to support them. As a result, we are still pushing to have FIVE qualifiers in Austin (averaging 20 teams each, with a hard max of 24 teams), but we’ll see. At this point, it looks like there are only enough teams to have 6 leagues in the rest of the region – so there should be 6 league championships and 5 qualifiers, each advancing 6 teams each.

At any rate, tournament registration has now opened, and I need to get us registered ASAP if you want to have any choices in the tournaments you attend.

The tournament dates are:
Dec. 5

Four Points Middle School (Single Qualifier, 24 teams max)
Jan. 16

Connally High School (Single Qualifier, 24 teams max)
Jan. 30

Vandegrift High School (Double Qualifier, 48 teams max)

As always, early vs. late tournaments each offer their own advantages/disadvantages. Early tournaments probably have fewer registered teams (especially this year, due to the complexity of the game) and a generally lower average score, while later tournaments offer more building time, but more teams and better competition. There are also advantages to having more than one of our teams in a single tournament (they can choose each other as alliance partners) and also disadvantages (because they are not competing against each other). Interestingly enough, the Vandegrift and LASA coaches told me that they’d already registered 10 total teams (6 from VHS, 4 from LASA) for the Dec. 5 tournament; I think they planned on having their second tournament be the double qualifier on Jan. 30, but I’m not sure.

In the past, we’ve usually placed two Iron Eagles teams in the first tournament, 2 teams in the 2nd Qualifier, and all four teams in the last Qualifier (the Double Qualifier). I need you all to think about which competitions you’d like to compete in for our discussion tomorrow – I’d like to get all teams registered by tomorrow night.

SCRIMMAGE
Yesterday was certainly an interesting scrimmage – you will note that virtually ALL of the teams are really struggling with this year’s game. I’m very proud of all of you for representing the Iron Eagles with pride! All four teams competed to the end, with an all-IE group of three teams coming just short of making it to the finals, and I understand that Guardian was honored with the best autonomous program.
Special thanks to our parents and mentors who took care of the teams, final practices, equipment delivery and pickup, and lunch for me these past few days – it gave me an opportunity to spend more time with my visiting family.

ROBOT STATUS
I know that each team has already been discussing possible renovations, and that’s great, but remember to keep expectations and timelines realistic. For example, remember that the first qualifier is just 4 weeks away!

After much thought, I believe that this year is presenting all teams with a unique challenge – in past years, the game has usually had multiple tasks, and the best teams have usually built robots that are able to accomplish ALL the different tasks (with varying degrees of proficiency, usually). But this year, I am starting to think that it may be almost impossible to create a robot that is able to accomplish ALL tasks with even BASIC proficiency, because there simply isn’t enough room in the 18″ cubed space to fit everything. Like us, most teams have spent the majority of their time attempting to design a drive base that is capable of completing the very difficult task of fully climbing the 50 deg ramp – and failing. That’s why I think the scores from the scrimmage were so low – most teams have been spending all their time experimenting with drive systems, and hardly any time on mechanisms to do anything else!

So each team may need to make some very specific tradeoffs in terms of mechanisms/strategy. Excluding autonomous scoring (which I’ll keep separate and assume is EQUALLY viable for either approach), there are two basic ways to score in this year’s game:

1) Climb and Hang – IF you built a robot to successfully climb the ramp and hang, but was not able to pick up or score debris at all, you could score the following points MAX:

Release 3 zipline climbers (20 points each)
60 points

Robot completely supported by pull-up bar
80 points

Claim All-clear signal
20 points

TOTAL
160 points

2) Score Debris – IF you built a robot to successfully pick up and score debris, and were able to climb the mountain mid zone but were NOT able to climb the high mountain zone (and thus hang the robot or trigger the all-clear signal), you could score the following points MAX:

Debris scored in a Mountain Mid Zone Goal

(10 points each – assume 2 runs of 5 balls/blocks ea.)
100 points

Release 2 zipline climbers (20 points each)
40 points

Robot Parked on Mountain Mid Zone
20 points

TOTAL
160 points

So if my assumptions are reasonable, then both of these methods are capable of scoring approximately the same number of points. Again, I’d love it if you proved me wrong, but I’m becoming more convinced that the size/complexity trade-offs will force you to essentially choose one method or the other. Each team will need to discuss and decide their primary strategy this week.

Thanks,

Michael Butler
Program Director

Iron Eagles Advance to Super-Regional Tournament

Posted on February 25, 2015 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

After advancing all four teams at qualifying tournaments last month, St. Dominic Savio’s “Iron Eagles” Robotics Program competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Alamo Regional Tournament on SaturOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAday, Feb. 21, at the headquarters of Rackspace in San Antonio. The FTC Alamo Regional Tournament is the largest in the country, bringing the top 78 teams from Central/South Texas to San Antonio to compete for just 13 spots at the next level! After a long day of competing against some of the best teams in the country, two Iron Eagles teams – “Optimus” and “Guardian” – successfully advanced to the FTC South Super-Regional Tournament, one of only four Super-Regional tournaments in the country. With this performance, the Iron Eagles are the only robotics program in Texas to send two or more teams to the Super-Regional in consecutive years!
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Iron Eagles Advance to Regional Tournament

Posted on February 3, 2015 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

FullSizeRender (8)St. Dominic Savio’s “Iron Eagles” Robotics Program competed in their final Qualifying Tournament on Saturday, January 31, and successfully advanced all four teams to the Alamo Regional Tournament!
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Congratulations and Next Steps

Posted on February 3, 2015 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

Congratulations on another outstanding tournament yesterday! At the beginning of the season, I set out a few goals for the program, and one of them was to have all four teams qualify for the Regional Tournament. Well, going into yesterday’s tournament, that goal was looking rather daunting, as after our first two qualifying tournaments only one of our four teams (Optimus) had advanced, despite each of the other three teams having put in outstanding performances at their first qualifiers.
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FTC Double Qualifier Jan 31st at Connally High School

Posted on January 31, 2015 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

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