2015 Indiana Robotics Invitational
This weekend was the 2015 Indiana Robotics Invitational at Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. This is an annual event where teams are invited from all over the world to come and compete in a two day robotics event. The teams invited have to make it through a application process and officially be invited to attend. Teams submit video footage of their robot competing as a backup and only the best teams in the World are invited to attend. In Attendance this year were teams from the US, Canada and a team even traveled from Israel to attend.
T3 competed very well on Day 1, with the last two matches scoring 280 and 275 points respectively. We ended the day ranked 21st out of this tremendous field of 67 teams.
Day 1 Evening . Geeks can put on an EPIC concert and talent show. It started with an EPIC lip sync battle from some of the coolest, nerdy mentors in all of FIRST Robotics. This was just plain awesome. Next, we had a Laser Light Show. It was tremendous to have the IRI, FIRST and all of the team’s Logos worked into the performance. We then moved into the Geekiest, Nerdiest rock band I have ever seen in my life, they were referred to as Dean Simmons and the Kamen Brothers. Appropriately named after the famous inventor, Dean Kamen. This band started with a medley of the greatest rock anthems of all team and moved into a set list of parody songs all relating to this year’s season and the lyrics included great anecdotes and reference to funny situations from this season. The kids loved this and what was really cool was that the last song in their set list was a Parody of Uptown Funk, by Bruno Mars, where they changed the lyrics to Truck Town Funk. Our team was then asked to come up and stage and dance in front of the entire full auditorium! The students really loved it and had a blast. I have to give a huge thank you to the band for doing this for us.
Day 2 – History is Made!
It was great seeing T3 members stepping up to fill in new roles. We even had a senior step up to be the drive coach. The team supported each other and the kids did an excellent job. We were able to get our can stealers working and got to use them in our last match so people could see they were effective and this eventually lead to us getting picked to move into the playoffs.
We were picked onto the 5th Alliance with FRC Team 195, The Cyber Knights, Southington, Connecticut, FRC Team 33, The Killer Bees, Pontiac, Michigan, and FRC Team 233, The Pink Team, Rockledge/Cocoa Beach, Florida. We all met, discussed strategies and it was decided that we would sit out the first match. Unfortunately, this did not work in our favor. The match did not go very well and we had an extremely low score. So, we switched up our strategy which allowed for us to enter into the second match. The match started very well, but unfortunately, while traversing one of the platforms on the field, our robot tipped over and we were unable to stack totes. This was disappointing but all in all we had an excellent competition.
The finals were exciting! We got to see the best robotics teams go head to head and see who the best really is! At the end of the competition, four teams prevailed with the highest score every recorded in Recycle Rush (345 points).
I would like to congratulate four excellent teams for a great showing and winning this event. It was earned and I will never forget seeing all 10 recycling container in the air under stacks of 6 totes. The winners were FRC Team 1023, Bedford Express, Bedford, Michigan, FRC Team 2056, OP Robotics, Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada, FRC Team 1806, SWAT, Smithville, Missouri. and FRC Team 2502, Talon Robotics, Eden Prairie, Minnesota.