Tom Bean Robocats headed to state!
Tom Bean -- On Saturday, 28 robotics teams from across Collin County met at Ereckson Middle School in Allen to compete for the “BEST” award. Your Tom Bean Robocats rose to the challenge, dominating Allen High School, McKinney Boyd, Prosper and Princeton to bring home a first place trophy and the coveted “Most Robust” award.
This year’s competition pushed the team into two new dimensions. Playing outside of Grayson County for the first time, the Robocats had no idea what opposition the big schools of Collin County could mount. Tom Bean is used to being beaten by Whitewright and could only imagine that these big schools would be equally tough.
Second, the robot was faced with the difficult challenge of carrying scoring pieces up a 10-foot pole. The team’s response to the engineering challenge was a lightweight sliding body with a minimal arm that specialized in picking up whiffle softballs and empty 2-liter pop bottles. The robot had three minutes to carry balls to the top of the pole and transfer bottles to the bottom. I was proud to watch the drivers step up to the controls with increasing confidence as they steadily increased Tom Bean’s lead during the morning seeding rounds. It turns out there are advantages to growing up in Whitewright’s neighborhood! You grow up tough. By the end of the seeding rounds, the Tom Bean machine had racked up an average score double that of our nearest competitor.
But as in all competitive sports, one should not get complacent. In the final rounds of the competition the scoreboard is wiped clean and the machine must prove itself again against its top competitors.
The first two rounds ran smoothly, but at the end on the 4th round the arm stopped working. The pit crew had three minutes between rounds to find the problem (a loose wire) and fix it. In their haste they failed to notice the winch line had entangled the robot hand. When the whistle blew for the beginning of the final round, it became obvious that unless the driver and the spotter could coax the robot free there would be no score. Sixty seconds ticked by. First place was slipping through our fingers. Pressure mounted as everyone on the team held their breath. At last our driver (Stacy Welch) wriggled the arm free and went on to score with a ball and a bottle, just enough to save our first place trophy.
The team competes next at Texas BEST on November 10 in Garland’s Curtis Culwell Center against robots from across Texas and New Mexico.
Wish us luck and endurance!
