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 2018 Team at the Michigan State Championship 3rd seed alliance & quarter finalists in the Dow Division Honored to win the Excellence in Engineering Award sponsored by Delphi We competed at the FIRST in Michigan State Championship at SVSU on April 11-14th. At the event 160 teams out of 508 in Michigan qualified to compete and were separated into 4 Divisions. The Chimeras competed in the Dow Division and ended up Quarter Finalists. After all qualification matches they were selected as a 1st pick by the 3rd seed alliance captain due to their consistent autonomous modes and scale placing abilities. Playing with Team 4237 Lance-a-Bot from Stevensville and Team 5467 RoboTractors from Dearborn, they fought through playoffs but were taken down by the 6th seed alliance. "Our strategy throughout the entire competition was solid. Our robot and Drive Team were at peak performance. Any issues, we troubleshooted quickly and resolved." Jon Uren, Coach "We would have liked to have gone farther in the playoff rounds, but sometimes things happen, an alliance partner has their robot tip over, another may miss scoring in their autonomous mode. In the game this year it's crucial to get ahead right away. You play to the best of your ability and keep pushing harder, we definitely did that and I couldn't be more proud of how my students performed." The Chimeras were given the Excellence in Engineering Award sponsored by Delphi. This is the top award given in the robot category and an incredible achievement to receive at the State Championship level. The award celebrates an elegant and advantageous machine. A robot that stands up to the rigors of competition and has features which reflect an engineering solution to a specific problem, and it is functional and practical. A team representative must competently describe the engineered feature(s) and can trace its conception, design, manufacturing/assembly, or deployment. Our performances after 2 District events and the MI State Championship left us ranked 40th in the state out of 508 teams and qualified to compete in the FIRST World Championship in Detroit on April 25-28. Excited to once again compete at that level along with other top FRC teams! Can't wait! THANK YOU to our alliance partners! Captain, Team 4237 Lance-a-Bot and partner Team 5467 RoboTractors! We hope to play with you again in the future! Short video of highlights of our robot during some practice at MSC
MEDIA & PRESS
Lapeer’s Chimeras qualify for World competition at Cobo ---> The Lapeer County Press Flickr Album of event photos --->  2018 Marysville District Event Winners! Thanks to our alliance partners, Team 217 Thunderchickens and Team 7218 Bradford Botdogs! Drive Team winning reaction. ***VOLUME WARNING!*** Videographer screams with results! Also camera get a bit shaky as hugs were given. The Lowdown: On April 6-7th, we competed at the Marysville District Event competition. After 12 qualification matches, we ended up 8th overall. During alliance selections we were picked by the 1st seed alliance captains, Team 217 The ThunderChickens from Sterling Heights. Picked for our reliable 3 cube switch autonomous mode which was a key factor in our wins throughout the competition, aggressive playing style and our ability to place power cubes high on the scale as well. The 3rd robot in our alliance was Team 7218, a rookie team from Southfield, the Bradford Botdogs, who complimented our alliance perfectly with their skill to get cubes into the vault for power up boosts quickly. Interestingly, in 2017 we were the 1st seed alliance captain and picked Team 217 at this same event! Together with Team 1701 we ended up Finalists, so it was exciting to once again be on an alliance together and this time take home the gold medal instead of silver. Between the ThunderChickens drive coach and our very own coach, Jon Uren, both brilliant strategists, we were able to have all 3 teams work together as an incredible force to be reckoned with. Our alliance dominated the eliminations rounds, winning against each alliance with two matches each. Immediately taking ownership of our switch, scale and then the opponents switch as well as filling our vault for boosts proved an effective strategy and resulted in our alliance winning the event. Taking home the Blue Banner and gold medals was an amazing accomplishment. Our team did a fantastic job of troubleshooting and addressing any issue immediately throughout the competition. Our autonomous mode worked flawlessly. For our effective programming of our robot we were honored to win the Innovation in Control Award sponsored by the Rockwell Foundation. This award meant a lot to us as our programming team put in an insane amount of hours this year and worked hard to get the autonomous modes (15 seconds of game play at the beginning of a match that is entirely controlled by programming) and programming of our controls done. Our electrical team was also key to this process as their ideas and systems were implemented well and utilized by the programmers. Our team has worked incredibly hard this season to do even better than last year and that is a lot to live up to! Endless hours put in since the beginning of our season in January. Meeting almost every day, even weekends to accomplish our goals. This win shows our efforts have been worth it! Due to our success at our first District Event at Kettering University and our win at Marysville we are now ranked 38th in the state out of 508 teams and have qualified for the Michigan State Championship this week from April 11-14th at Saginaw Valley State University. Only 160 teams qualify to go and will compete in 4 divisions and eventually the winners of those 4 will compete for the Championship title. Our hopes are to gain enough points to qualify for the FIRST World Championship held in Detroit this year from April 25-28th. Starting ranking 38th puts us in a pretty good spot, but we need to perform well with the other top teams in Michigan as only 87 get to go on to Worlds. HUGE thanks once again to our alliance partners: Captain, Team 217 ThunderChickens and partner, Team 7218 Bradford Botdogs. It was incredible to compete with you and take it all the way to the end! We hope to play with both of you again in the future! PRESS & MEDIA Chimeras Victorious at District - The Lapeer County Press RoboZone TV - Qtr Finals Recap Semi Finals Recap Finals Match 1 Recap Finals 2 Recap Hanging up the blue banner in our room.
 Nemesis placing a cube on the scale. Photo credit: Daniel Ernst We competed at our first of two district events over on March 8-10th at Kettering University. Overall we were really happy with our performance, but also realized what we need to change or fix on our robot Nemesis before the next competition to be even more successful! Although our overall design served us very well, we had some issues with the way our robot was receiving messages from the field which caused problems with our autonomous modes. No matter what we did and even had experts looking at it, we couldn't resolve the issues with the Pigeons we were using, so switching it up for next time. It was frustrating because our programming team had worked so hard on our autons and they worked perfectly in our room and on the practice field, but only randomly on the actual field. We hope our changes will correct this issue for Marysville so we can show what our robot can do! (video of our 2 cube switch auton that worked a few times below...) The other was our climber. It just had not worked as well as we would have liked and was taken off as soon as the comp was over! We have already prototyped and made something different that so far has proven to work quite well. One thing we do well is to learn from our failures or obstacles...quickly assessing and moving on to something that will work better! We also played one match 2 vs 3!! The 3rd robot in our alliance was not working and unable to compete, so it was just us and Team 3667 who fought hard and nearly won!! It was an exciting match to play and had us quite pumped for the rest of the day regardless of the loss. See the match ----> CLICK HERE We also held the high score of 518 for the entire event from Qualification match #11. It was nice to be back at it and to see the other FRC teams as well. These events are a competition, but the comradery between all the teams is something we look forward too. Being able to help other teams with whatever they needed is always a plus!  Our 2018 Team of students (minus Wesley & Hunter), mentors and alumni after the event. Nemesis, our robot was already sealed back up in his bag and ready to head back home! Row 1: Trista, Haley, Brent, David Row 2: Christian, Alexis, Grace, Sam, Caoihme Row 3: Ryan, Ana, Matt, Luke, Will Row 4: Sydney (holding our award), Aiden, Gavin, Marshall, Nick Row 5: Steve, Alicia, Bernadette, Scott, Jon, Rob
Video of our 3 cube switch auton working in a match! THE LOWDOWN: Our team competed in 12 qualification matches and landed in the 6th seed alliance for the elimination rounds with Team 5712, Hemlock's Gray Matter (captain) and Team 1243, The Dragons. Our alliance fought hard during the quarter-finals, and succeeded to take down the 3rd seed alliance in a final tie breaking match. We went onto compete in the semi-finals and although we stayed fighting, we were beat by the 2nd seed alliance. Our team earned The Creativity Award which "celebrates creativity in design, use of component or strategy of play." We were awarded this for our unique intake design which uses top and bottom rollers as well as sensors to pick up a cube from any orientation. As a team, we were incredibly honored and proud to win this award! It's taken many prototypes and iterations of this design to get it how we want it and we are still making improvements! Our team captain and driver, Gavin Storts, was awarded as the District Dean's List Semi-Finalist out of all the other nominees at Kettering. This award "recognizes outstanding student leaders whose passion for and effectiveness at attaining FIRST ideals is exemplary." Criteria for this award includes: Demonstrated leadership and commitment to the ideals of FIRST, effectiveness at increasing awareness of FIRST in the school and community, interest in and passion for a long-term commitment to FIRST, overall individual contribution to their team, technical expertise and passion, entrepreneurship and creativity and the ability to motivate and lead fellow team members. He will go on to interview again for the title of Finalist at the Michigan State Championship!!! We couldn't be more proud of him! Mentor and our Coach, Jon Uren was nominated by our team members for the Woodie Flowers Award, which "celebrates effective communication in the art and science of engineering and design. Dr. William Murphy founded this prestigious award in 1996 to recognize mentors who lead, inspire and empower using excellent communication skills." A winner for this award is chosen at the Michigan State Competition. HUGE thanks to our alliance partners - Team 5712 (captain) and Team 1243! We had a blast playing with you and worked really well together in the finals! Hope to play with you again in the future! Congrats to the winning alliance of Team 4003 TriSonics, Team 494 Martians and Team 7144 Next Tech Hydra!! Our team next competes during the last week of district competitions at the Marysville District Event at Marysville High School, April 5-7th. From there hoping to qualify for the Michigan State Championship which will be the next weekend and then the World Championship in Detroit at the end of April. Wish us luck! PICTURES FROM THE KETTERING EVENT MORE MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE EVENT
Our 2018 Season game challenge is here!
We gathered at CFI for the game reveal early Saturday morning. The excitement was flowing, even if you can't tell from the somber/serious faces in the first pic! The smiles picked up more as we watched the live broadcast from FIRST and then later after we took time to break up into groups, read sections of the manual and then present them to the team.
After going over the game manual and having lunch, we drive right in to projects. Some building field elements, some start prototyping, some begin the strategizing sessions to help us decided what goals we need/want to achieve. The room was buzzing with activity and it was a productive first weekend of Build Season! And when you build field elements they must be tested properly! Which is why we keep lil Chimichangas around. It's also important to practice safety first, but a little singing and dancing is allowable. Sydney show us the way.
 A clean and organized room before the chaos begins. It's always good to end one season with some cleaning, organizing and figuring out what will be needed as we start another. Also good to get a shot of this as it will not be this way for quite some time! In a few days the tools will be buzzing, room rearranged, ideas flying around, parts scattered in the mix of prototyping and building...an endless list activities that will change this scene quickly as our six week Build Season begins.
Game reveal is on Saturday. We're excited and ready to begin all over again. 2017 was an amazing year for our team. Lots of growth, challenges we learned valuable lessons from and incredible moments we'll never forget. Bring it on 2018! These fire-breathing mythological beasts (oh yes, it's true) are ready to take on whatever you throw at us! #ChimeraStrong |
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