Written by Norah R., notes by Francisco D., photos by Lucas W.
On Saturday, October 24th, the Neah-Kah-Nie Middle & High School robotics team, Tsunami Zone, headed to Hillsboro High School to attend the Silicon Forest League Scrimmage (also known as Meet 0)! Our team participates in a robotics competition called First Tech Challenge, and every year they come up with a new game/challenge. This year, the game is called BioBuzz!
The main objective of the game is to tip a large, see-saw-like “hive” by launching two different sizes of balls (pollen and nectar) into them. Points are given based off of the number of times your team’s hive is tipped, different numbers of nectar and pollen in the “flowers” (cylindrical containers in which pollen, being smaller, can be removed from the bottom by the robot, but nectar, which is slightly larger, cannot), and parking at the end of the round in the loading zone. Each team is randomly partnered with another team in an Alliance to work together throughout the match against another alliance. Your alliance partner during one round could be your opponent during the next.
For the past few weeks, our team has been working on creating a new robot specifically designed for this season. Our CAD modeling team has been working hard at every practice to design the robot and learning how to use our 3D modeling app. The team had a last-minute addition of a launching system the day before the meet which greatly improved our matches. This being Meet 0, it doesn’t count towards our ranking points, and is merely a scrimmage for teams to practice in a real meet environment and see what other people’s designs look like.
Our first watch was versus teams “S.O.S. (Scholars of Steam)” and “Beyond Tech”. Our alliance partner was team Event Horizon. These are all teams that we had seen last year, in our same league. During our 30 second autonomous phase, a pollen ball got stuck on our intake system. Once teleop started, we were able to get it off fairly quickly, but it was interesting that it got stuck like that. Our intake/storage system also jammed once during the match, but as this was the first meet and most teams’ robots were still rough drafts, this was not unexpected and was resolved quickly. We lost this match 21-56.
Our second match was versus The Swagletons and Valley Catholic Robotics. Our alliance partner was Proxima Nova. In this match, our alliance managed to tip the hive at least twice! Our team received no penalties during this round, which is pretty good because a lot of the other teams got penalties or were at least talked to by the referee. We won this match 48-33.
Our third match was against ReVamped Robotics and the Overcaffeinated Engineers, and our alliance partner was The Swagletons. Our opponents were both teams that did very well in last year’s season, with ReVamped even going to the FIRST Championship! During this match, our alliance tipped the hive once, and our alliance successfully parked in the loading zone. Our alliance lost this match with a score of 32-136.
Our next match was versus teams NautilusTech and High Voltage, and our alliance was Ground Control. Ground Control’s robot was having some technical issues, and so they were not able to bring it to the field for this match. During the match, while we were attempting to play defense against a robot from the other alliance, the power cable on our robot popped out and it disconnected from the control station. This will likely be an easily fixable problem though. We lost this round 6-124.
Our final match was versus Kilowatt Chaos and Mission ImBOTsible, which were both new teams to our league this year! Our alliance partner was the Over-Caffeinated Engineers. Our team successfully scored three pollen into the hive during this match, which was not enough to tilt the hive but was still an improvement. We won this match 33-23.
Although some things didn’t go as planned during this meet, our robot is coming together very well and this was a good chance to see what is working well and what we need to work on! We are still implementing an autonomous system and making the launching system a bit more precise. The team is very excited for this season!
Helpful summary of the game this season: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sUH3z5a5S9I…
Thank you so much to everyone who makes this possible, including but not limited to:
Mudd Nick Foundation
Tillamook County Creamery Association
Eugene Schmuck Foundation
and the Oregon Robotics and Tournament Outreach Program
Thank you to our wonderful coaches and mentors:
Kathryn Harmon
James Johansen
David Hummel Sr.
Evan Solley
And a big thanks to our wonderful Neah-Kah-Nie School District!
GO PIRATES!! #NKN56
