The Erie Tiger robotics team has had great success in recent years, traveling out of state to compete in tournaments in Texas. At this time of year they are preparing for the next season of robotics. They spend hours after class every day working on new codes and robots that will stun the judges.
In recent years, they have had amazing success with drivers (a type of obstacle that the robots go though). Anderson H with the robotics team explains “ we have some of the best drivers in the world.” He then, however, follows up talking about what the team needs to work on, which is autonomous (a different obstacle). Anderson goes on and points out the stats “ we are 7th in true skill right now, but our skill score is 500th.” Which really points out the obstacles he believes that the team needs to focus more on this preseason. He elaborates on the fact that if they bring up their skills score, they’re overall score will jump up a lot in the leaderboard, making them a much more difficult team to beat.
There’s a specific obstacle that the team is striving to beat, this being a 4 ft platform that the robots have to try and climb up to. Anderson points out this challenge “there hasn’t been many games where we’ve had this platform and been able to climb this high.” This points out not only that the platform is hard to get on, but it’s also rare to see it at competitions, giving the team less opportunities to attack it.
The team also points out other things that they need to work on and focus a lot of their time on, Senior Mason Waldau, explaining “by far the biggest thing that a team can bring to preseason training is cad knowledge, and time management skills,”emphasizing that they need to work on multiple different things within their little time that they get after class every day. Making sure that each part of a robot is working to script and that nothing will mess up when they get the opportunity on the big stage.
The team also focuses on having fun throughout their seasons, said by Waldeau, “bake into your robot design process stuff that is enjoyable to you.” Not only is the team working on improving throughout the year, but they’re also focusing on having fun and enjoying the time that they get to spend with each other and their robots.
