We just got back from the Baltimore Regional for the FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition). Despite some early setbacks involving mechanical failures and untested hardware, our robot, the Hand of the Monkey, performed well – the fast minibot gained us most of our points, since the drivers didn’t get enough practice to really hang all that many game pieces.
We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel in the Inner Harbor, just a block away from the Baltimore Convention Center where the actual competition was held. Since we had to fly in, we didn’t have much in the ways of transportation – most of the time, we just walked to where we needed to go. Unfortunately, we never did get a chance to try Baltimore’s famous crab, so maybe next time.
In terms of the competition itself, we managed to make it into the quarter-finals, eventually losing to the first-seed alliance (this was mostly because our alliance had two useless robots (teams unnamed) and us), leaving us to score almost all of the points in the round. Although our position was uneviable, we felt we acquitted ourselves well.
As something of a surprise, we did get the Engineering Inspiration Award, the second most prestigious award given at a regional competition. With it, we qualify for the World Championships in St. Louis – an accomplishment that we didn’t really expect from our travel tournament.
