This weekend, the Bells Robotics Team 254 competed at the Silicon Valley Regional held at the San Jose State Event Center. Team 254 valiantly fought to the quarterfinals, where its alliance was eliminated by Teams 488, 766, and 852. This loss marks the end of an eight-year winning streak at the Silicon Valley Regional. Before the playoffs, Team 254 was ranked in 24th place with a 4-4 (W-L) record. The Bells were picked by the fourth seeded Team 1070, Royal Robotrons. The third partner in the alliance was Team 692, The Fembots. Team 254 gratefully thanks the Robotrons and the Fembots for giving the Bells an opportunity to win Silicon Valley Regional for a ninth time.
This years game is similar to tic-tac-toe, except the board is a vertical circular rack. The rack has eight columns and three rows for a total of 24 scoring locations. Each team places inner-tubes into these locations to gain control of a location, and this earns the team two points. For each row or column that is formed, the team earns extra points. At the end of the match, teams have the opportunity to climb on top of an allied robot to gain extra points. For each robot that is four inches above the ground, 15 extra points are awarded. If a robot is one foot off the ground, 30 extra points per robot are given.
The presence of double lifter robots that could reliably lift two other robots above the ground presented a problem for the 254 alliance. These double lifter robots contributed 60 points to the opposing alliance. The Bells fast scorer robot would need to score six inner-tubes in order to counter a double lifter. With strong two-on-one defense by opposing teams, this was often impossible. The Bells own alliance had a double lifter robot, the Robotrons, but it was not as reliable as other teams.
The Bells constructed the robot in a six-week process that involved collaboration with Team 968 RAWC. Each team designed parts on the computer with Autodesk Inventor and shared the files with each other to arrive at a final design.
The Bells next match is in Las Vegas from March 29-31, 2007. There the Bells will compete against 49 other teams for the top trophy.