Nessie

Meet Nessie, our bot for the 2021 Infinite Recharge Season. At 2’2″ and 124 lbs, her goal was to collect balls and shoot them into ports as well as climb onto a bar.

See below for some helpful links: 

Infinite Recharge

Due to the COVID pandemic, teams could participate in up to three virtual challenges instead. The three challenges were the Game Design, INFINITE RECHARGE at Home, and the FIRST Innovation Challenge presented by Qualcomm. In the Game Design Challenge, teams had to develop a game that could be used for future seasons. The INFINITE RECHARGE challenge consisted of several components that highlighted teams’ skills when handling robots. In the Innovation Challenge, teams had to identify a problem relating to this season’s theme, Game Changers, develop a solution, and present it to judges.

Source: Wikipedia

Awards

    • Quality Award – INFINITE RECHARGE at Home Challenge (Argon Group)

    • Skills Competition Finalist – INFINITE RECHARGE at Home Challenge (Argon Group)

    • Finalist – Beach Blitz

INFINITE RECHARGE at Home Challenge (Apr. 19 - Apr. 19)

In this event, the Robot Dolphins decided to participate in the Galactic Search, Hyperdrive, Interstellar Accuracy, and the Power Port. All of these categories are scored out of 150.  In the Galactic Search category, teams had to program the robot to collect balls autonomously. In this category, the Robot Dolphins scored 145.92. In the Hyperdrive category, teams had to drive their robots through predetermined paths manually. The Dolphins scored even better in this category, earning 148.41 points. In the Interstellar Accuracy category, teams had to score balls known as power cells into ports. The Dolphins earned the maximum score in this category, getting another 150 points. Similarly in the Power Port category, teams had to score power cells in ports, but had less time to complete their tasks. The Dolphins were again able to earn a perfect score here, earning them another 150 points. Their final score landed them in second place with 448.41, only 1 point behind first place. The Robot Dolphins were proud of their performance after earning such a high score.

Tidal Tumble (Oct. 15 - Oct. 17)

Even though the main season was canceled, a few of the offseason events still took place. The Robot Dolphins entered two robots into this competition, 5199 and 5199B. After the qualification matches, 5199 was ranked 8th with a ranking score of 1.5 and 5199B was ranked 13th with a ranking score of 1.17. 5199 was picked by the 4th alliance captain, 4818, and played with 2584. 5199B however was picked by the 6th alliance captain, 7157, and played with 2102. Sadly, both alliances lost in the semifinals against Alliance 1 and Alliance 2. The Robot Dolphins were still glad that they were able to get two of their robots all of the way to the semifinals.

Beach Blitz (Nov. 5 - Nov. 7)

The Robot Dolphins hoped to perform a little bit better in this competition than in Tidal Tumble. After the qualification matches, they were ranked 12th with a ranking score of 1.5. They were picked almost immediately by 6995, the second alliance captain, and also played with 4079. They were able to win their match against Alliance 7 in the quarterfinals and win their match against Alliance 6 in the semifinals. Unfortunately, Alliance 1 proved to be too strong for them and they lost in the finals. However, they were still happy to win the finalist award and they were looking forward to the next season.