It's a dilema. It costs $ 4000 to register for each event. A lot of dough for a poor inner city school, raising all its funds from generous neighbors and friends. Can we justify attending two regionals and hoping for the finals as a yearly mo?
Last year, we only attended the Silicon Valley event. We did great, for a rookie team. Came in 7th. Got a judges award.
This year, we learned that the bot suffers some damage at each event. We had a few problems the first few rounds. Wheels were slightly askew from so much turning. Connections were wearing. Drive chains were getting loose. By the time we had tweaked all that, we were down to 20th (out of 47) in ranking. We still had enough showing that one of the finalist teams picked us to be an ally, but we should have done better. The competition was not, as we had anticipated, much stronger in San Jose.
So, it's good that we went and learned all this. We'll do better in Atlanta for knowing. But what about next year? Should we plan on two regionals, just so we can tweak and learn? Or, is it too much to spend?
Any competitive bot people out there have two cents to throw in?
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