The Calm Before the Middleton Madness!
TDT members worked hard over their holiday break, meeting on three separate days before and after Thanksgiving to refine
programming , practice driving and make final tweaks. The duct tape was flying, too, as those not working on the robot at any given time, worked on their team “look,” and give-aways. (There’s definitely a learning curve on that button maker!)
But we think we’re in pretty good shape and we’re looking forward to finally putting our robot and driving skills to the test on Saturday, at Middleton High School.
The event is free and open to the public. Qualifying matches start at 10:15 AM, with elimination matches starting at 4:45 pm. Come for the Opening Ceremonies at 10am, to see the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Disposal Team showcase their working robots for event attendees, and then watch the matches by student teams. There are 16 teams registered to compete in the Middleton Madness tournament, hailing from the Gulf Coast area and as far away as Gainesville and Orlando.
Filming and Building
The FTC season is well underway here in Florida. Results from the last two qualifying competitions are online at the Florida FIRST Tech Challenge website and it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us! This year, Florida is trying out the use of Team Videos instead of Team Interviews the day of a competition. This adds a new element to the competition experience, hopefully freeing up judges to watch teams in action rather than just getting a five or ten minute glimpse of teams in a formal interview setting.
That also creates one more thing for teams to do during their build season, in addition to building their robot and maintaining their Engineering Notebook. But everyone’s sure busy at meetings!
At our last meeting, we worked on further refining our build, which made for some good team video opportunities. Hopefully we can get down to some serious programming and game strategy at this week’s meeting. So much to do, and so little time before our December 4 competition at Middleton High School!