Robotics Thrill Ride (Part 2, Silicon Valley)

Having barely caught our breath, we were off again to a totally different part of our state for the next regional competition in Silicon Valley.  This competition was over Good Friday weekend, so just Delia and I went to San Jose for a few days.  The team always stays in a big VRBO and, for this one, the house was actually 2 houses on 1 property-- a girls' house and boys' house.  Since there was plenty of space, Delia and I were invited to stay in girls' house with Ella and the other RoboMoms and we had a blast!

Between the 2 competitions, minor adjustments were made to Vector.  Ella also made these renderings for a flier to hand out to scouts and judges and it impressed people.  (No, I don't understand what most of it says. ;)

The Silicon Valley Regional is the last competition before the World Champs.  It attracts some of the best robots in the world and it fills its 60 team capacity.  It's known for being aggressive, cutthroat, and competitive.  We only got to play 9 matches here, so each one reallllly counted.  Again, the luck of the draw had us paired almost exclusively with teams lower than us and never with ones better.  This meant more losses than wins, which killed our ranking.  The team endured lots of weird trials too.  One time they took a super hard hit by 3 robots at the same time that knocked Vector's wiring lose and made him dead for 1 match.  A subjective call by a ref gave us a pretty bogus penalty when another robot drove under us, but we paid for it.  And one match that we actually won had to be replayed because of a field error.  In the replay, we lost.  We got quite beat up and humbled here.  Nothing we had really hoped for came to fruition in the qualifying matches.  Ella and I joked that "the wages of skipping Good Friday church is bad luck at your robotics competition"! :)

(The exciting triple robot balance!)

But, Robotics is not just about the win.  We impressed the judges once again.

Being ranked in the bottom half, we weren't in a position to pick our own alliance, but WE were picked by another team, so we still made it to playoffs.  And this alliance was another cool, international one-- the other team picked for it was from Mexico!  Our guys had fun trading team shirts with one another.

In the playoffs we had a pretty major upset, being the 8th place team and beating the 4th place team!

We won another award!

And we watched our personal stats stay in the very top.  This shows us 6th of 60 teams!  Amazing!  Robotics is a numbers game.  If you are doing your scouting well, you're not just looking at ranking, because that is mostly based on luck as we unfortunately learned, but you are looking at these stats and seeing what robots are actually consistently scoring points in all parts of the game.  According to these stats, Ella figured out that we are the number 22 robot in all of California!  There are 350 teams in California, so we're in the top 6%!  This is remarkable, considering what a small team we are in such a competitive area.

The best part of this competition was having the number 1 and number 2 robots at this competition (and the ones that will go on to win Worlds next week, they have 5 times in a row) tell us multiple times that they wanted us as their 3rd in their Finals alliance.  It almost hurts to know we could have played with the top teams, won for sure, and gone to Worlds.  But alas, we were scooped up by another lower-ranking alliance first.  Good for them for doing their scouting, but a bit of bummer for us! ;)  It was an honor to have the robot super stars of the world notice us and make the effort to try and work with us.

 Ella concludes her Robotics career feeling great about the whole experience.  She and her team have an impressive 100% record of winning awards, making it to playoffs, and putting up strong stats.  They built the best robot our school has ever sent, caught the attention of judges, top teams, and YouTubers, and made a name for the CarbonKnights in this Robotics world.  They forged friendships and made so many fun memories together.  Mostly, though, they played with integrity and performed to best of their abilities every single time they took the field.  I've had every emotion on the spectrum these past few weeks and have cried more than once, but what we feel most at the end of this ride is pride for our brilliant, talented daughter and gratitude that she introduced us to this world.  Ella says she hopes to stay in it, volunteering at regionals in Southern California, near her college, and maybe mentoring her own team some day.  

Robotics Thrill Ride (Part 1, Lancaster)

For the past month, we've been fully consumed with my favorite season of the year-- Robotics Competition Season!  Right after the new year, the First Robotics Challenge is announced to the world and then all of the thousands of teams have the same amount of time to design and built a robot that will meet the challenges in competitions around the globe through the months of March and April.  It's exciting and stressful and full of highs and lows-- a real thrill ride!

Our little school competes in 2 regionals each year.  First up was the Aerospace Valley Regional, way down in the desert of Southern California.  Dave, Delia and I were all able to take a few days off to attend this competition.  The long drive down was SO scenic!  Snowcapped mountains and green, rolling hills dotted with wildflowers will be mental memories I keep of this fun weekend.

Ella arrives at a regional 2 days before matches start.  The team needs to build its pit station, scout other teams, do a whole day of practice matches, and pass many inspections.  On Friday, the play for points began we were there for it!  This year's robot is named Vector (after the math that the team used to build his arm) and he is magnificent!  Vector is possibly the best, most consistently and effectively performing, and coolest looking robot our team has ever built.  They went into their competitions feeling strong and good about probably being at the top of the leaderboard.

Vector's tasks, with the help of his driver Evan and arm operator Ella, were to drive autonomously (using just code) for 30 seconds, pick up cones and cubes and place them on a game board with pegs of various heights (which he did with his one-of-a-kind vacuum intake), and then finish by balancing on a wobbly charge station-- the more robots from your alliance you can get to  balance, the more points!  

Vector never let his CarbonKnights or their alliances down!  He never broke down and he did what he was built to do over and over, racking up impressive personal stats and proving to be a Top 10, maybe even Top 5, robot on the field!

Now the cool and challenging thing about Robotics is that it is a team sport.  You never compete alone, but always in a 3 robot alliance.  The alliances in qualifying matches are randomly computer generated.  Sometimes you are paired with amazing robots and the W is guaranteed.  Sometimes you are paired with weaker robots and you are the only one scoring points, so while you look good, your alliance loses and your ranking drops.  At Lancaster, we were unfortunately a part of more weak alliances than strong ones, so our ranking did not end up reflecting how good we actually were.

(Delia calls this game face picture the Marvel Movie version of Robotics-- "CarbonKnights assemble!" ;)

But, even though we didn't rank as high we had hoped, the team felt SO good about how they were performing and made peace with things outside of their control.  This group of 4 seniors have been in school together since kindergarten and building robots together since 2019.  They've become great friends along the way.  I've always loved their attitude that they were never in it to just win, but to learn and grow and have an amazing time enjoying the experience and each other.

We played 12 qualifying matches over 2 days.  When Vector is not on the field, he's in the pit getting tuned up.  Fun this year was having nearly every team, at both regionals, stop by to admire and learn  more about the infamous "All Carbon Fiber Robot".  The kids loved showing him off!  They manufacture their own carbon fiber in house too, making our team extra unique.  We even grabbed the attention of a film crew creating episodes of Behind the Bumpers for the First Robotics You Tube channel and guess who was chosen to be featured?!  This was a season highlight for Ella and the team!  As they filmed, other teams watched in awe behind the camera.

Another important thing taking place behind the scenes are the many conversations with judges.  They want to know about EVERYTHING.  Over the years, Ella has become the spokesperson for the team because she is so comfortable talking and knows all the ins and outs.  These conversations with judges are what give your team one of their special and coveted awards at the Awards Ceremony.  We're so proud that Ella and her team are 4 for 4 with winning awards at competitions!  Before she was on the team, our school previously won 1 award in 9 years. 

Ella was honored to be chosen as Team Captain this year too.  It's not just a token title!  She had some big responsibilities that required quick thinking and strategic decision making.  She did an awesome job!

Our team was not really in a position to win, but they did do well enough to captain their own number 6 Finals alliance.  This means we had control over who we played with and got to pick the 2 teams we wanted with us.  This was another highlight!  One of the teams we chose was from Switzerland and they were so fun!  They taught us a Swiss dance and gave us Swiss chocolates.  We tried to learn their national anthem.  This alliance had some of the best camaraderie and teamwork that our team has ever experienced.  And this alliance gave us the most exciting match of the whole regional-- a high scoring tie with all 6 robots balancing in end in the Finals!  The entire place went nuts!  We were thisclose to upsetting that 3rd place team, who did go on to play in the championship match against the number 1 team!  We feel like this, more than the ranking, showed just how good we were this year!

Robotics gets your heart racing!  Matches are only 2 minutes long and so they are intense and full of action.  One of the best parts of all this for me is sharing it with the other families from our school in the stands.  We bond over bad calls and thrilling upsets and nail-biting finishes and love and pride for our kids, who are doing things with their robot that their parents barely understand. ;) 

Sure enough, at the judges Awards Ceremony, the CarbonKnights walked away from Lancaster with more hardware for their trophy case!

Our time at the Aerospace Valley Regional was amazing.  This year, the turnaround was quick!  The team returned home from the desert on a Sunday and then left again on Wednesday for Silicon Valley...stay tuned for part 2!

Ella's Senior Pictures

Our good friend Erica, who photographs all the plays and musicals, was up to the task!  When I contacted her and said, "We'd like Senior pictures that incorporate the stage, Ella's robots, and that have a SoCal vibe for her college choice," Erica nailed the assignment!  We LOVE how she captured Ella and all the dramatic and fun sides of her!  (A mini shoot in the robotics lab is still coming because when these were taken, Vector the robot was busy getting ready for competition and wasn't ready to have his picture taken yet ;)