wall-e

tipping point (2021-22)

Robot name origin: claws kinda look like Wall-E’s lol

The challenge video can be viewed here.

Competitively, this season was more laid-back for me as I also juggled college apps, a major piano exam, school and APs, two theater productions, and the scarce slivers of first-semester-senior-year social life.

But intellectually, I kept moving up! There was lots to experiment with!

Wall-E with the Excellence Award we won at the State Championship.

Cool subsystems and specs:

  • Pneumatic claws (super fast and strong enough to hold heavy mobile bases steadily while driving)
  • 4-motor 4-wheel chained drive (back in-person, need to defend! And not get stuck on rings on the ground)
  • Torqued up lift (to lift mobile bases)

Did I focus on Skills again? You bet.
After 2 seasons of focusing almost exclusively on Driver Skills, I felt confident in my instincts, and ability to think on the spot and under pressure. This year’s challenge reminded me a bit of Tower Takeover, where misplacing something even a little bit could lead the whole thing to collapse; it was delicate.

**videos coming soon, once i find the hard drive that has all my photo backups…

Did I reach States again? Yuhuh
Despite not focusing on robotics as much as I did last year, I was pleased with my performance at States. My Driver Skills and Autonomous Skills ran perfectly the first time, putting us in 10th place for Skills. My experience with creating match strategies and communicating effectively with alliances also got me to place in 10th in the actual match-based competition. I was fine with this considering I had spent less time actually building the bot (compared to other bots at States, mine was relatively simple. I didn’t even have a dedicated subsystem for ring management).

Did we reach Worlds again? Yuhuh.
Did I make it to the division playoffs again? Well… no. The main reason for this was the lack of a ring management system. I did actually make one leading up to Worlds, but it was not structurally sound and ended up just slowing me down. I figured it was probably not worth it, and stuck to scoring rings using my base lifter. I do wish I was able to solve that problem in time. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a future project…

Was it a great season? Absolutely
This was yet another season of growth, experimentation, pushing myself, learning, and friendly but tough competition. Overall, I consider it a great finish to my time in VEX!