Bear Metal Blog

Here in Portland, Bear Metal, together with Paly Robotics (Team 8) and Skunkworks (Team 1983), took it all the way to the semi-finals. The alliance who faced and defeated us was composed of teams 1515, 2130, and 997, who went on to win in the finals. The fight between our alliance and our opponent in the semi-finals was fierce. While a prominent alliance composed of 847, 2471, and 2990 posed little resistance to them in the finals, the semi-finals were nail-biters.

Our alliance put up a valiant fight. Considering the hardships of Friday, Bear Metal quickly got back on its feet on Saturday and put up a great struggle to the very end.

Though our team didn’t receive any awards at Portland, we’ve proved our robot, Odyssey, and are looking forward to Seattle.

Stephen G.

The closing ceremonies are here, and soon we will be heading home. After the ceremonies, we will have a closeout report, and then sign off from Portland.

Match 1: Close match with a 4-3 loss. Skunkworks’ robot got toppled over leaving the Vikings and Bear Metal robots to work even harder.

Match 2: Another close one. Score was tied but a ball got caught underneath the Bear Metal robot causing a penalty for a 5-4 loss. We’re done in Portland.

Robert Davis

Prior to lunch, the top eight teams selected their alliance partners. Bear Metal was fortunate enough to be selected by teams 8 (Paly Robotics) and 1983 (Skunkworks).

First match resulted in a DQ due to touching the opponent’s tower in the last 20 seconds. Expensive penalty!

Second Match: Heart pumping competition. We tied requiring another match. This is a best 2 out of 3 elimination round.

Third Match: Domination was name of this game. All members of red alliance worked hard for 8-0 win.

Bear Metal was scoring from a distance and playing defense. Skunkworks was bouncing balls returning to the field for quick cycling. The Vikings were scoring one after another, even two at a time.

This gives each a win requiring one more match. It’s really loud here!

Last match: Bear Metal Advances! The alliance broke a scoring record with an initial score of 10-3. This alliance is humming with similar performance to the match before.

The final score was 5-2 for the win advancing the alliance to the semi-finals. Glad I don’t need my voice for this blog.

Robert Davis

High energy erupted with Bear Metal showing how they can persevere through a lot of challenges.

Their last match had the robot scoring one goal after another. The final score was an 8-2 win. This accelerated us to 20th place. Hope the top teams were watching.

Robert Davis

An interesting match occurred with two blue alliance team members, 488 & 360, scoring all of their points into the red goals making the score 0-3 for a loss. The standings show 488 moving from 10th to 6th. 360 moved from 19th to 17th. Interesting scoring algorithm.

Currently Bear Metal is in 34th.

Robert Davis

Exciting first match of the day. Bear Metal’s robot performed as it should, kicking the balls from the far zone and then quickly scaling the barrier. From the center it attempted shots multiple times for successful scoring.

The final barrier was advanced with such enthusiasm that we almost toppled one of our allies. The initial score was 3-4 which was corrected with the opponent’s penalities to a 3-2 win.

This Bear Metal performance propelled our standing from 48 to 30.

Robert Davis

Congratulations to Skunkworks Robotics, Team 1983 for winning the Website Award. If you haven’t seen their website, check it out now. Aviation High School in Des Moines, Washington, is home to Skunkworks. Their team was founded at almost exactly the same time as Bear Metal, and we live just across the valley from each other. So we see each other frequently at outreach events. Skunkworks sets a great example to other teams in our region.

Great bot handling was exhibited by the Bear Metal drive team. Kicking a number of the balls out of defender zone and then driving over the humps to score a point. This match ended with 1-2 loss. Nevertheless a heart pumping match to watch. The match can be seen here.

Robert Davis

Penalties eliminated the alliance score for a 0:1 loss.

The penalties arose from our bot when the ball retainer barrier broke allowing the balls to enter under the robot. This strap was replaced with a stronger one.

The pit crew is humming with repairs and bumper changes. Jim described it similar to a NASCAR pit stop.

Robert Davis