World Championships – FIX IT 3491

Interesting Mechanisms – 2024

It’s great to see all the robots that different teams brought to Worlds. Here are some of our favourites.

Leo: 14179 Sushi Squad
3 stage stacked claw that was designed to only pick up 2 pixels by squishing other pixels out.

Ryan: 18139 Rebel Robotics
Their robot has a compact tape measure rolling arm. It allows for minimal space to be occupied while having long reach. The material of the ‘tape’ rolls into a tube as it extends out from the robot.

Jason: 11754 EnergySmart FTC
Their claw had a unique design, similar to ours, but instead of having a side-by-side centerpost with pincers mechanism, they had a mold like thing that would grasp all around their pixels. It would hold one pixel in the front and one in the back with two of our claws on each side; as if they were pincers; that could rotate around a wrist, making it in any orientation possible. The wrist would allow the pixels to be placed horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. In addition their arm can extend to ~3 ft.

Max: 11228 OverClucked Bots
Really cool scoring mechanism. It pinches the inside of a pixel and releases with a servo.

Jasper: 18031 Horcruxes
Mostly made their own frame, not much channel or bought parts. Might have been expensive.

Kai: 11039 Innov8rz
I saw a super helpful mechanism which I want to try playing around with. It’s called a husky lens and it’s a AI training tool. The mechanism has a chip for training AI models and a small 2 inch IPS display so all the training can be done without a separate computer on the small display.

Competition Day 3 – 2024

There’s no question that the surprise of the day was waiting in our Pit this morning. It is very much appreciated by all team members and especially the parents who do Pit Sitting for us!

We were visited by some judges. It was a great opportunity to show off our amazing posters!

Unfortunately, our matches didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. After one particularly rough match, our whole centerpost structure needed to be replaced with almost no time before our next match. Fortunately the team got it on in time, but it wasn’t fully functioning until the next match. At least we had a spare (“thanks Doug”)!

Our mascot finally put in an appearance today on Tiara Friday.

Competition Day 2 – 2024

The team had a very early start to the day playing in the first match of the morning! We were able to get a picture of the team between matches.

Dryw is an old fried of FIX IT who is now working for SparkFun. He came by to show us a new optical encoder that he’s been developing. Likely it will be available in May, in time for testing over the summer.

Here are our results so far.

Match #	Red		Blue		Score
Qualification 2	20279	19964	8872	3491	124:149
Qualification 15	22708	14179	3491	10355	214:239
Qualification 31	16008	3491	10138	25	68:161
Qualification 47	10255	11112	3491	6294	238:182
Qualification 58	3491	22801	18031	8641	149:244
Qualification 77	14793	9974	11228	3491	276:204
Qualification 97	11148	3491	11754	18549	—
Qualification 110	3491	11039	310	7842	—
Qualification 120	7105	3491	10829	16417	—
Qualification 132	23350	19706	3491	8610	—

Match Results

Unfortunately, our first two wins were followed by four losses. The good news is the robot was working well at the end of the day, and there’s still more matches tomorrow.

Competition Day 1 – 2024

The robot cart finally came today and we were able to finish setting up our pit. We also got some fancy green lights for our banner! We also got to play our first match and we even won!!!

Judging seemed to go well and they were interested in what we’d been doing this season.

Kai: I was so surprised when they told us we needed to reinspect our team prop, we never got told anything about it before and now we might need to change it. Auto’s gonna be rough

Max: I’m glad we won our first match. Off to a good start!

Leo: I did my first scouting today and I’m excited for more!

Here’s our list of matches for the Thursday and Friday.

Match #	Red		Blue		Score
Qualification 2	20279	19964	8872	3491	124:149
Qualification 15	22708	14179	3491	10355	—
Qualification 31	16008	3491	10138	25	—
Qualification 47	10255	11112	3491	6294	—
Qualification 58	3491	22801	18031	8641	—
Qualification 77	14793	9974	11228	3491	—
Qualification 97	11148	3491	11754	18549	—
Qualification 110	3491	11039	310	7842	—
Qualification 120	7105	3491	10829	16417	—
Qualification 132	23350	19706	3491	8610	—

Thanks to Kristina for the twinkling lights in our pit!

Day in Houston

Our robot, Captain Hook, arrived safely in Houston last night and right now we are unpacking it and testing every feature. We are preparing Captain Hook for competition tomorrow!

Cool things from the Pits

Jasper: We saw our team name in the FTC Hall of Fame, which I thought was really cool because its cool to see the past accomplishments of our team!

Jason: One of the teams had a LEGO globe which teams can place a flag on where there from.

Leo: A team had a tape measure giveaway that was in inches and centimeters and it was really useful since I can’t find one when I need it.

Ryan: One of the teams had a super small robot which was really surprising.

Kai: I got to talk about a really interesting experimental technology with a SWERVE alumni from Washington who is now a Sparkfun employee. The technology is an optical version of dead wheels which has a built in IMU and laser which uses sensor merging to get the most accurate results. What was really cool is the technology comes out in May.

Max: There was a team that had a raffle for a free safari trip to South Africa. I hope I win!

Tonight we went to a Vietnamese restaurant, Huynh, and the food there was fantastic! The Pho and other delicacies tasted really good and I would recommend going there again to any teams going to Worlds.

Arriving at Worlds 2024

FIX IT 3491 arrived in Houston Texas for Worlds yesterday at around 6pm (Houston time)!!!

On our flight to Houston, the pilot made an announcement congratulating us for going to Worlds, and wished us the best of luck! Thanks Sean for making it happen!

During our unpacking in the Hilton hotel, we found a letter from the TSA wishing us the best of luck and saying that they were gentle with our robot, Captain Hook.

Last night we were out on Discovery Green and we walked around, ate some pizza and had some fun!!!

FIX IT is heading to FTC World Championships

It’s exciting to win the BC FTC Championships and find out your team has qualified for Worlds!

But then the planning starts. How do you all get there? Where will you stay? How do you improve your robot to make it ready for World Championships? How are we going to pay for everything?

Fortunately, our season plan started with a complete game analysis and robot strategy with improvements for each of our events. We already knew what we’d need to change to be ready for Worlds.

Our robot, Captain Hook, now has a much for effective claw and an extending are which should double our scoring in tele-op.

Our other priority is fundraising! If you’d like to support our team, please check out our GoFundMe. If you know a company who might want to sponsor the team, please contact us with the information.

Follow our journey in at World Championships on our website. We’ll be making new posts each day.

Team FIX IT – BC Championship – Inspire Award

World Championships Day Four (and last)

Today marked the last day of the World Championships, with absolutely amazing final matches displayed by their amazing robot, teams, and performances, and absolutely stunning finale!

The team preparing to watch the final match!

And although there were teams that won, and lost, we would like to congratulate ALL teams competing at the event throughout the week, and congratulations to all the Dean’s list nominees, finalists, and winners, and a special thank you to all of the fantastic volunteers that make events like this possible, without you, this would never have been possible.

After the event, came the worst part of every trip… Packing. So, our team decided to… Well, see for yourself.

We had an absolutely amazing time at the World Championships, and we hope to be back next year.

Worlds Championships Day Three

Today was the final day of qualification matches, we played the last 4 of our matches, getting a new high score of 221 points! Ending at a ranking of 137 out of 160. But much more importantly, we all had a huge amount of fun, including watching an amazing display of team mascots dancing in front of the fields!

And of course, following FIRST tradition, we wore a tiara for Tiara Friday!

Unfortunately, we were not picked for the alliance selection, but we would like to congratulate not only everyone in the finals but also every single team for their hard work and dedication, allowing them to compete in the World Championships!

Afterwards, we decided to indulge ourselves in some food trucks at the “Block Party” enjoying some delicious food while sharing stories around the table.

We ended the day with another swim and some card games, and we all can’t wait for tomorrow. Good luck to all the teams competing!

World Championships Day Two

Today we completed three more of our matches, performing a lot better than yesterday! We had a high score of 189 points! We were able to showcase not only our strength in scoring in the Shared hub while playing defence, but also to spin and score the ducks at the same time!

Scoring in the Alliance Hub, preparing to spin Ducks.

All of our team members also had some personal highlights from today’s event:
Amren: “I liked the kimchi fries and experience of Field Coaches and want to be able to pass the knowledge to younger team members. Specifically, practice everything you want the robot to do. It doesn’t matter how simple it seems, practice it! Now I understand how important it is to have someone watching the field and making decisions.”
Bryce: “It was great to talk to a team who we could relate to easily since they had an extending arm so we could talk about the woes of wiring moving arms.”
Hanson: “It was great to see some of the expos in the innovation fair, especially worth noting a mini copy of the Internation Space Station, which is able to mimic the ISS in real-time.”
Ishaan: “I liked listening to the Rap songs from different teams. They get a $100 gift certificate from our sponsor Actuonix.”
Jackson: “I liked looking at FRC, it’s bigger, louder, but the rules seem simpler and not as many points.”

Afterwards, our team decided to continue to try out amazing Houston Food! With Truffle Fries, Pasta, and Pizza, all in a Texas Style. And of course, with lots of work, comes with lots of fun:

We have a match first thing in the morning, and we can’t wait to get started!