What is Overdrive?
The goal of Overdrive is to score as many points as possible by three main ways. When a robot passes their teams finish line, going in a counter clockwise motion, when an alliance’s Trackball passes their own finish line, or if a robot hurdles the trackball over the alliance’s overpass, located above both team’s finish lines. However in the first 15 seconds of the game, called autonomous, alliances earn double points by doing the three point scoring methods or can earn points by: knocking each Trackball off of their overpass, getting their Trackballs over the overpass, driving across the opponent’s finish line, or driving across a lane marker.
Summary of the Competition
With one years’ experience, we entered the 2008 season with more confidence. The game this year had the robots race around a track lifting large inflated balls over an elevated structure. Our primary strategies were to race around the track in autonomous and lift the balls over the supported structure with a very large claw on the end of an articulating arm. This robot was much more complex than our first year and we really struggled to make the arm and claw work properly. On the last night it still was not working completely but it was midnight and we had to pack it for shipment.
The team had so much fun in Chicago the previous year, we decided to return one more time to the Midwest Regional. So once again about 10 students and 2 teachers headed to Chicago. Our mentor was delayed until the last day of the competition, but we received help from several teams as we continued improving and repairing the arm and claw. Our team continually improved our ranking during the qualification rounds and finished with a team ranking of 15 out of 42 teams. We were selected by the number 6 seed for our first taste of elimination rounds. In the quarterfinals we lost to a team headed by eventual world champions Team 1114 (St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada). We felt very good about our accomplishments and looked forward to next year.
The team had so much fun in Chicago the previous year, we decided to return one more time to the Midwest Regional. So once again about 10 students and 2 teachers headed to Chicago. Our mentor was delayed until the last day of the competition, but we received help from several teams as we continued improving and repairing the arm and claw. Our team continually improved our ranking during the qualification rounds and finished with a team ranking of 15 out of 42 teams. We were selected by the number 6 seed for our first taste of elimination rounds. In the quarterfinals we lost to a team headed by eventual world champions Team 1114 (St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada). We felt very good about our accomplishments and looked forward to next year.