FIRST Competitions

After six weeks of the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into the fabrication of the robot, here is where it all pays off. The competitions run from early to late March each year, with the FIRST Championships in April. On the playing field, you are out to win, but gracious professionally. Off the field, you cooperate with the other teams. FIRST does not have long-standing rivalries like other sports, as a team may be your partner one match, but your opponent the next. And that is what gracious professionalism is. Learning to compete, but not violently, but then cooperate the rest of the time, to openly share ideas and concepts, to synergize together. This may should new and unique to rookies and newcomers, but this is what will fuel the industry of the future, competing while cooperating in an open and friendly environment.

UTC New England Regional (2006)

The 2006 UTC New England Regional was held on March 9-11, 2006 at the new Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut. The UTC New England Regional was the first and only official FIRST Regional event for Gus Robotics Team 228 for 2006, except for the FIRST Championship Event in Atlanta, GA. Here at the UTC Regional, over 3,500 participants from all four levels of the FIRST Program. With the FRC event on Thursday - Saturday, the NERVE Vex Regional on Friday, and a JFLL / FLL demonstration on Saturday, the 2006 UTC Regional was amazing.

New for the 2006 competition was a change in the venue of the competition. After being held at the Meadows Music Center for many years, the competition was moved to the new CTCC, located in the new Adrienne's Landing Project. This new venue was applauded by many as a positive move by FIRST.

When we shipped our robot on the last day of the build season, we knew we still had a fair amount of work to be done on Thursday (the practice day) at the competition. Much of Thursday was spent in the pits finishing and refining the robot. As Friday dawned, we now had a robot with a our shooter mounted on a working turret mechanism.

As Friday - the first day of the qualification rounds - came ambitions and hopes were high for Team 228. As Friday's matches came and went, Team 228 stay constant in the rankings. For much of the competition, we were ranked anywhere between 6th and 10th our of the 40 teams competing. Although our robot was usually ranked among the top teams, our robot was not yet perfected.

one of the early matches in Friday, the fourth and final period was waning. There was ten seconds left to the match, and the other two alliance partners were either already on our ramp or were attempting to get on. And we were on the other side of the field. Gunning it across the field in our top gear at twelve feet per second, we downshifted right as we hit the ramp, and began to drive up. However, during the match, one of the sprockets that holds the turret in place can undone, and the turret / shooter wasn't properly secured. As we hit the ramp and begun to drive up the thirty degree slope, the turret bounced backwards, throwing our center of gravity off, and tipping our robot onto its back. Unfortunately, we had to fix our turret in one place for the remainder of the competition to prevent this from happening again.

As Friday ended and Saturday dawned, everything on our robot was dialed in except for one feature - our center elevator. The center elevator, which feeds balls into the shooter, was beginning to jam in some some of the matches. This was do to the polycord belting not having enough friction with the Poof Balls, and would jump off the powered pulleys, causing the elevator to lose its rotational force. When this happened, we were unable to shoot balls. Although it was a small problem, it was what would eventually end our alliance's chance at winning the regional.

hen the qualification rounds ended on Saturday, we were ranked 10th out of the 40 teams there. As the alliance selections began, we would eventually move up into the seventh alliance captain spot. Despite being in FIRST for eight years now, Team 228 had never been an alliance caption at an official FIRST Regional. (Although we have been alliance captains at some off-season competitions, like BattlyCry6)

As the seventh alliance caption, our team was able to choose our two alliance partners ourselves. Our first pick was none other that RAGE 173, and our second alliance partner was Team 1665, The Weapons of Mass Construction. In our first quarter final match, an unknown issue caused RAGE's robot to be disabled for half of the match. While attempting to score into the center goal, our robot was pinned on three sides by other robots. Also during that match, a pushing match with another robot bent the front member of robot frame inward. We unfortunately lost that match. The second match was not that much better. Although RAGE was not disabled for half of this match, constant "good ol' New England defense" kept our team from scoring into the center goal. And becuase the other alliance had won the autonomous mode, and therefore recieved a ten point bonus, our alliance lost our second quarterfinal match.

Although our team did not win the regional, we did win one of FIRST's awards. For the second year running, our team won the "Best Website Award" at the UTC Regional. Our FIRST Vex Challenge Team (The Vexperts, FVC Team #59) did very well at the UTC New England Regional - becoming the NERVE Regional Finalists. Please visit our NERVE page to read more about our Vex team at the UTC New England Regional.

‹‹ Go back to the 2006 FIRST Competitions page.