DEWBOT VII IRI Trip Reports

Clem

Thursday - My master plan to rent a van for the trip failed at the final moment, so I ended up driving my Honda Civic the 600+ miles to Indianapolis with 5 souls on board. Andrew, Julie Christopher, Gillian and Siri Maley made the trip with me. I drove, departing the Eagle ACME parking lot about 8:30 AM.

We kept up a lively conversation throughout the trip, mostly concerning team organization for 2012, training plans and expectations. Siri kept notes, so our musings were not lost and forgotten.
We made our first stop for lunch at Quaker Steak & Lube in Wheeling WV, the geometric centerpoint of our drive (within a few feet). America's best Hot Wings, curley straws & motorcycles hanging from the ceiling! What more could you ask for? Refueled immediately after lunch and moved on.

Didn't stop again until we reached our hotel ~20:30. Faith & Foster rolled is a little later. We joined Faith's group for a very nice dinner at Applebee's.

Friday - Carly was sick for the day, leaving us with no option but to use IRI to train a new driver. Andrew. Unfortunately, due to our loss of home and the cancellation of PARC and BR², we have had no driving practice since St. Louis. It's hard to think of a more interesting place to learn to drive than at IRI. Andrew did a great job (and brought a great attitude to a very tough situation), but we suffered in the qualification matches simply due to lack of experience. Douglas performed well as new Human Player.

Our sonar is broken and we've got no spare. Autonomous was shut off. On the positive side, this allowed some alliance partners to score double Ubertubes.

IRI dinner - lasagne - was very well done. Great job!

I was basically dead (or at best a Zombie) for the Talent Show. Fatigue & and fever. I think there were funny parts, but it is all a blur. At least I didn't bite anyone (in my zombie mode).

Carly was very sick for the whole day. Heather, who stayed at the hotel to care for her, said that she looked like a zombie too. Heather is a world-renouned authority on zombies, so this can be taken as gospel truth.

Saturday -

Sunday - After lunch at Olive Garden,

In Conclusion

• This is the best robotics competition I've ever participated in
• Learned a lot. Made new connections.
• We should try to get invited again next year
• The team should make plans accordingly
• We played well. We've got a good robot.
• Competing at IRI will force us to become a better team

Siri

Thursday

With the trailer all packed on Wednesday and cars mostly-kinda-sorta sorted out, we left Downingtown (actually Eagle) at around 8:30AM. In an effort not to cram 5 people into a Honda Civic, Molly and Kira switched to Foster's van. I went down in the Civic with Clem driving and Andrew, Julie and Gillian in back. The whole <5 people plan didn't work out so much, but at least we had fun.

We spent most of the trip (the parts between laughs and our now-traditional good but eclectic music) discussing possible off-season schedules and team organization. At the request of my manager (himself pre-occupied with the whole driving thing), I broke with IRI trip tradition and took notes. Very clever idea, I might even remember to do it myself next time.

Equally as clever, our first and only stop was a Quaker Steak & Lube. In addition to being within a couple feet of our voyage's geographic mid-point, it also has the best wings in the US, not to mention crazy straws, rather tasty salad and let's-call-it-meatloaf, and ceiling-mounted rotating motorcycles that would look great in a living room. Plus, as Gillian pointed out, the "Eat Here" sign is pretty hard to say no to. And to top it all off, it's the second year in a row we've walked in to the playing of "Mr. Roboto". Definitely a worthwhile stop.

Our refuel by Quaker Steak carried us all the way to the Indianapolis hotel. Rita and Ruth beat us there and Foster and Faith showed up soon afterwards. After a quick check in, we headed out with Faith's van for a town drive and a great dinner at Applebee's. I eat better with robotics guys that pretty much any other time. Some scouting prep and that annoying "day" job work and I finally got to sleep.

Friday

An early move-in and some practice field time got DEWBOT VII all set for its IRI debut. Unfortunately, we missed our on-field practice match, which caused some communication difficulties in our first qualifier. More unfortunately, this season's base driver, Carly, was sick. This is rather an understatement; I have it on good authority that she was very zombie-like. Our first match was rough as Sasha, our traditional arm driver had to take over driving base, while Andrew, our traditional human player, took arm...and Doug, our Safety Captain, stepped in for human player. Everyone did a great job stepping up to the plate in a difficult situation, but unsurprisingly it was a rough match.

Andrew and Sasha then switched jobs and Andrew got some utterly invaluable experience with defensive driving. It's a steep learning curve, but he's by far the most gifted driver we've had--watch out for him next year! Lack of practice coordinating base and arm functions and a measure of stupidity on my part got us into some trouble on offensive missions, but we made it. The scouting kept us in line on defense and the robot didn't take a whole lot of abuse. There were just a few pit checklist oversights (holy smokes has that gotten better), and no major mechanical failures. We did have some communication blips that made an already difficult driving experience even harder, but the Team took it like champs.

Unfortunately, sans home facilities, autonomous couldn't be worked on before IRI. We turned it off for all our matches, though this is actually harder than it seems. Apparently FTPing has a few complexities we weren't familiar with, which pulled us a penalty in one match (and gave me DEWBOT IV flashbacks). Luckily it got straighten out, and our alliance partners often attempted and succeeded with double tube autonomous scores. Unfortunately, we did lose one Ubertube to an opposing roller claw in teleop, but other than that we kept our "get it in the zone" promise if the double tube run missed. Ah, roller claws.

After matches wrapped up, we handed the robot off to the programmers and found out just how comfortable the floor beside the practice field is. After a magnificent lasagna dinner and a tasty cupcake, I officially crashed. Coming out of several days of no food and little sleep, even the relief of Thursday couldn't save me. I made it through the talent show in a semi-dignified fashion, I think. (Having spent a good portion of my life in the performing arts, I loathe to fade off during performances.) The DSK concert did me in, though. Both were great, but I really should have been sleeping. Apparently I wasn't doing that whole walking straight, seeing clearly, blood-to-the-head thing by the end of it. Again on good authority, I was a zombie by the time I got back to the room. Luckily, my favorite zombie expert roommate didn't see fit to attack me. Apparently Carly's contagious though, because she was fine by that night and both Clem and I were members of the undead. Foster saw that I made it back without completely un-animating, and we beat Clem by about 40 minutes. On the minimal plus side, there's nothing quite as terrifying or adrenalin-inducing as not knowing where a zombie is. Unfortunately the curing effect is only temporary, as the night stunk pretty royally.

Saturday

Rough night made for a very rough morning, but thankfully I managed to shake it off by the first match. Nothing like a coach's instinct at IRI to re-rationalize you. As noted on Friday night, Carly came back to life. After a quick drive team meeting, we agreed Andrew would drive a couple more matches for the defense experience, and Carly would take over from there. Andrew continued to learn rapidly, and I continued to learn how to coach him and what to spend our very limited now quasi-practice time doing. After another quick drive team meeting, we ensured Andrew was actually familiar with all the necessary technical aspects of the Driver's Station. Lesson for DEWBOT VII season: training replacements. Certainly a worthwhile one.

Carly took over for the last few matches, but unfortunately didn't get much stick time. We jetted off during autonomous for the first time since early Friday (though luckily avoiding the penalty), completely lost arm control, and soon after lost all communication. The next match, comm went down again. Lesson 2 for DEWBOT VII: cross-discipline training, and we need electrical knowledge/oversight. Rough way to end, but we definitely learned a lot, and it was more fun than it sounds like.

After alliance selection, the Weissmans, Kelloms, Clem, Foster, Rizzo and I stuck around for the real IRI competition: the Mentor Match. Foster and Rizzo both put up admirable efforts, rocketing across the field on their stomachs riding kitbot chassis to send Mighty Mouse up its Tower. Rizzo unfortunately lost in the first round, but Foster made it to the second (when he almost convinced his opponent to come to his own Tower). After the match, Clem, Foster and I made short work of the pit and then indulged in the fine dining of Lawrence North concession stands and the excellent Andy Baker-provided Indiana corn. In the mean time, the programmers grabbed lunch and then stayed working on the practice field. It drives straight! Sorry we blew that front sonar sensor in qualifications. And many thanks to Alan Anderson and the host teams for keeping the field up as long as they possibly could.

The rest of the team got back during the quarterfinals, and we packed up the trailer in time for me to catch the last 45 seconds of the final finals match. No 29 elimination matches like last year, but at least Rizzo-the-Ref was happy. The competition was over by 4PM, but with dinner reservations stuck at 7PM, not even we could kill 3 hours on team pictures. After floating a few ideas, Foster got the plan to help the host teams break down the field. We all made short work of the task (except for carpet rolling; that's long) and had a lot of fun doing it. In fact, we made such short work of it that we eventually decided to cancel the reservations and leave for Dayton early. We got to the border and had a nice team dinner at Great Wall at about the time we would have ordered food in Indianapolis. This broke up the drive well, and we managed to get to Dayton in time for a mentor night out before the bar's "live" "music" got too excruciating. (P.S. If you were wondering, manually raising the volume on a random sound mixer isn't actually "live music" in any sense of either word.) Good time though, and a night of "day" job work and even some sleep had me ready for Sunday's Air Force museum tour.

Sunday

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good Air Force museum (I realize this is hard to believe). After a nice breakfast at the hotel, we headed straight (err, basically) for the museum and got on the bus to the ridiculously cool Experimental Aircraft Hangar. I hear there were some presidential planes nearby, but the former alone was way too amazing for the 40 minutes we got there.

Back at the main museum, we checked out the Early Years Gallery. Just as interesting as last year, but improved this time by the efforts of our own omniscient tour guide. We then headed to the penultimate Cold War Gallery and checked out the view from the Missile & Space Gallery. And of course, our crew (Clem, Rizzo, Heather, and I) had to compete for the second annual "coolest photo in the F-16 or F-4D cockpit" contest. Rizzo's F-16 shot of me last year is still the reigning champion. We spent the entire 2 hours in those galleries -- no complaints, maybe we'll get to SE Asia's next year.

After a quick meeting, a few short squirrel chases, and some more prolonged "why can't I just read everything in this gift shop" musings, our car headed out for lunch (albeit via the pleasant and now-traditional scenic route). With Gillian's approval, we had some great food and discussion at Olive Garden before hitting the road again. Thanks to the commendable mpg of Honda Civics, Clem's driving, and Julie's GPS, we made it home by around 10PM. Much like the other rides, this one was filled with productive conversation, team bonding and a whole lot of laughter all around (including from Gillian). Why are the IRI and FLR car trips always the most productive several dozen hours of our season?

Conclusion

• IRI rocks. I mean, FIRST rocks, but IRI is another beast entirely.
• The Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum is also way up there.
• Understandably, our record landed between DB3 Pittsburgh and DB7 FLR, but personally the event's in my top 4. Definitely the people that make the experience.
• We need to work on training in a lot of areas, but we've definitely got great kids and mentors.
• I definitely learn a whole lot here, in several areas. Didn't have as much networking or touring time as last year, though.
• Coaching here takes a lot more preparation time than I historically have at IRI. On the plus side, I coached with Raul Olivera. Osmosis, maybe?
• We should break down fields more often.