Writes Christopher Docherty, Teacher of DET
After an impressive weekend at SLBS on Saturday 22nd November, in which MTS_MAVER1CKS managed to win the Robot Skills Award with a total skills score of 91, they were determined and ready to break this score and win the Tournament champion award the following week on the 29th November, at Greig City Academy.
The day began just before sunrise for us, with our robot match ready and notebook completed the night before. We fortunately had a shorter journey compared to SLBS, taking us 40 minutes into North London.
Managing to reach there 40 minutes early before inspection, we focused on fine tuning our autonomous code and brushing out minor errors. We managed to pass through inspection with no issues with our robot.
With 9 known matches upcoming and the awards of Robot Skills and Tournament Champion up for grabs, we began putting our attention into the first practice match, which we won with a score of 97 – 6 in an alliance with 37596A against teams 6023J and 78116B. We then went on the win all our eight Qualification matches, with an impressive score of 100 – 23 in our seventh match.
The competition ran smoothly with our robot experiencing no mechanical failures and fortunately, no need for changes. As a result, we managed to perform our robot checks and prep the robot for each match on time.
In skills we achieved a Programming High Score of 41 and a Driver High Score of 54 which combined gave us an impressive skills score of 95 that beat our previous score of 91 showing that our efforts in coding and the robot over the short week had worked.
For all our final matches we formed an alliance with 10478C (Error 404). In the Quarter Finals, we achieved a score of 119 – 0 against 6023X (StoweBots X) and 7975A (Autobots). In the Semi-Finals, we won against 29457X (St Chris Icicles) and 10478B (SubZero Robotics) with a score of 125 – 11. In the Finals we then won against 20785X (Nova) and 78116A (HABS_CyberSquad) with an equally impressive score of 84 – 31 against two highly ranked teams at GCA, winning us the Tournament champion award.
Overall, for MTS_MAVER1CKS it was a triumph and a huge improvement from previous competitions. We went home with the Tournament champion award and Skills award and maintained our rank of 1st in the UK Middle School V5 Skills Rankings Board.
The competition showed our perseverance and motivation to always try to do better and improve even when we are doing well. The trip home was a proud and fulfilling one and we look forward to excelling in more competitions to come.
