2023 Competition - Charged Up
About the Competition:
CHARGED UP, presented by Haas, is part of the 2023 FIRST ENERGIZESM presented by Qualcomm season. In CHARGED UP, teams are inspired to see the potential of energy storage in a new light as they compete to charge up their communities. Renewable energy can transform our communities, but only if it is effectively stored and delivered to those needing it. The power of engineering can help make a meaningful difference. This year’s challenge addresses global challenges related to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #7, which focuses on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy. firstinspires.org
Our Season
Equipped with the knowledge and experience gained at the World Championship in 2022, we invested in Westcoast Product's Swerve X drive (flipped belt configuration) for our competition robot this season. After the kickoff, designing and building the robot proved challenging with our continual lack of experience due to having to train inexperienced new members. Our veteran members had one year of real competition experience during Rapid React season.
We started the season with a good design for the arm and intake and launch design. However, after attending the scrimmage in Lee's Summit two weeks before our first regional competition started, we realized a significant flaw in our design. We worked tirelessly for the next two weeks to redesign, build, and implement our arm and claw. Our robot - Win-Nguyen, was finally ready for competition -- in time for the Heartland Regional. We competed and ranked 12th at Heartland and were the first pick on the 8th seed alliance - a rookie team from Iowa. We graciously joined the coalition and helped the team fix up their robot to get through our matches in the elimination rounds. Unfortunately, we were eliminated as semi-finalists.
At the Central Missouri Regional, we ranked 8th and ended as the 5th seed alliance captain - unfortunately, the winning alliance stopped us at the semi-final. At the Greater Kansas City Regional, we started well. Unfortunately, one of our alliance robots made a ninety-degree turn on the charge station and landed inside our perimeter, resting on our arm motors during the autonomous part of the first match. Unbeknown to us, this mishap caused the canned wires on our robot to slowly sever, which caused our robot to have grounding issues for every other match for the rest of our qualification matches. Another side effect of the mishap caused the gearbox for our robot's arm to suffer a crack that kept causing stiffness in the arm movement until our second to last match of the season when it completely shattered itself. With the help of our alliance team, we were able to fix the arm, and Win-Nguyen was able to finish the last match gloriously. One of our alliance robot's bumpers fell off during autonomous, which caused them to be shut down by field officials. With two robots against three, we led the match to the end with a three-point lead. However, with only two robots against three robots docked at the charge station at the end, we lost by the difference of having a third robot on the charge station. Despite being unable to go to the WorChampionshiphip, we ended the season strong and proud.