This past Sunday, our team received the Inspire Award at the Boston University High School Qualifier! The event was lots of fun, and we were very pleased with the performance of our robot. The teams who participated in the scrimmage that we co-hosted with the LHS team in December may remember that are robot was, well, less than impressive. There is a bit of a story behind that: After the scrimmage we realized just how poorly our robot performed in a real competition environment, so we decided to completely redesign our robot. The hard part about this was that we only had three weeks to do it before the BU qualifier, but we were up for the challenge. The first major change that we made was a switch from our omni-drive system (doubled up four inch omni-wheels mounted at 45˚), and switched to a parallel or “skid” drive system, which involves two big rubber wheels in the front and two pairs of doubled up four inch omni wheels in the back for turning. The omni-drive did not provide enough traction for us to get up the ramp, which is the primary factor that influenced this change. We decided to focus on the magnet balls and the bowling ball, with the ability to put balls in crates if need be. The outcome was a robot that went from a score of 0 to a high score of close to 80 points three weeks later. Besides winning the Inspire award at the BU Qualifier, we were also the runner-up in robot performance. Also, we held the high score for the competition with the R.A.B.B.I team, a score of 137 points! We had a great time and can’t wait for the MA state competition!