CalGames Day 2

Today was the second day of the 2010 CalGames competition. The whole day our robot did exactly what we told it to do and we only had to ever make a minor change before a match. The success of our robot didn't exactly translate into our matches, considering that we lost all of them except for the only match that our robot was not communicating with the driver station (we believe this was because the battery was running low). Our biggest downfall was most likely the fact that our divers had less than 24-hours to get used to driving the robot, and we now know to make lots of time to practice.

However, throughout the entire fall season, our goal was never to win CalGames. We wanted to make sure that our current team had the skills necessary to design, build and program a robot for the actual FIRST competition. We 100% completed this goal. We took what we learned from last season and applied our knowledge to the design of our robot. For the first time ever, we used pneumatics, and I am extremely proud of this accomplishment because we now understand how it works and we have a new tool to implement in future challenges. The programming team also proved themselves amazing, as they were able to complete all of the code (in a new language) in practically 8 days. One team called us crazy for making a robot just for CalGames, but we are all proud of the magnificent Will da Beast.

We talked to some amazing teams and we will definitely plan on attending CalGames again next year. Congratulations to all of the teams who competed, but specically to 971, 254, and 692 on their 2010 CalGames win!

Photos will be posted to the Picassa, and you can check out the videos we have posted on YouTube (1700gatorbotics). Don't forget to follow us on twitter (Gatorbotics1700).