FIRST Robotics Competition Team 4918, also known as The Roboctopi, is a FIRST Robotics Team based in Port Townsend, Washington. It was created in 2014 under the mentorship of Austin Henry, an engineer at Atlas Technologies, and in partnership with the Northwest Maritime Center. The rookie team was made up of a core of about a dozen students, most of which would go on to stay with the team until graduating. Returning team members would serve as helpful leaders to newcomers, allowing them to adjust and learn about the complexities of FRC. In 2015 a retired Navy avionics engineer, Darrin Newlander, joined the team as a mentor. The Roboctopi stayed in the Northwest Maritime Center for two years before moving into a private shop. After suffering a major robbery in 2016, the team decided to reach out to the community for a new space to work in. The team eventually settled in a new home at the Port Townsend High School Robotics and Technology Lab, also becoming a 4-H affiliated program and being joined by parent and new mentor Brian Morningstar. The team continues to reside in the PTHS lab and works hard to foster an environment of learning and creativity among its team members.
2014 was our rookie year. The 2014 game challenge was Aerial Assist, a game that required the manipulation and throwing of large inflatable yoga balls. The team settled on building a pneumatic catapult, utilizing the standard FIRST drive base. Our robot was named Buster. Our first event was the Glacier Peak Qualifier. We had limited success in qualifying matches, ending with a 4-8 record of wins and losses. Despite this, we were selected for an eliminations alliance, getting knocked out in Quarterfinals after going 1-2 in a best-of-3 series. For our efforts we were given the Rookie Inspiration Award. Our experience at our first event allowed us to learn about and fix crucial design flaws in our intake. By our next competition, we had improved our robot so much that we placed first in the rankings with a stunning 11-1 record, earning the Highest Rookie Seed Award. In the playoffs, we went 2-0 in Quarterfinals but were knocked out after being defeated 0-2 in the Semifinals. Our oustanding performance in both the qualifying and elimination matches earned us the highly prestigious Rookie All Star Award. Because of our performance at both of our regional events, as well as the awards we won, we earned enough district points to earn a spot at the District Championship, where we went 5-7 and finished in 47th place.
Our next year was a game called Recycle Rush. Recycle Rush was a challenge about stacking large grey totes and garbage cans. As such, we decided to make a robot that was essentially a giant elevator for totes. Our robot, Mad Stacks, was built on a custom mecanum drive train to maneuver through the towers of totes on the field. Our first event was the West Valley Qualifier. Our robot was equipped with an onboard microprocessor, allowing for us to program a field oriented drive system. With this, we were able to earn the Excellence in Engineering Award, as well as being picked for an alliance into the Elimination round. We we went as far as the Semifinals before we lost to the opposing squad of robots. Our next event was the Mount Vernon Qualifier. There, we finished rank 12, also advancing to Eliminations but not making it past the Semifinals. With our success at our Qualifying events, our team moved on to the District Championship, where we placed 28th, which put us in a position to go to the World Championships.
In 2017, which featured a game called FIRST Steamworks, our team went back to winning plenty of awards. That year’s game had two main objectives. Most teams that year went for one; we went for the other. At our first event, which was Mount Vernon, we were the only robot which could do this second task. Additionally, when our robot systems broke, they automatically tried to fix themselves, and this resulted in us winning the Innovation in Control Award. At the following event, which was Auburn, we improved so much that we were ranked third and got to pick our partners. We won the finals, thus getting our first “blue banner” and another award, called District Event Winner. Like Recycle Rush, our team was just barely on the outside, but thanks to those awards, we got to Worlds.
In the future, we hope to try for the more prestigious awards, such as the Engineering Inspiration Award and Chairman’s Award.This may be difficult, but we are certain it is accomplishable.
2018 was a very difficult year. We as a team were attempting to establish a greater quantity of protocalls and routines to streamline our fundraising, robot design, and education processes. We had many new recruits, and, as a result, a somewhat rough season. The game was FIRST power up, and, whilest attempting to achieve our goals, we tried lots of new things. We put an emphasis on team and robot appearance. We powder coated our robot, improved on our pit design, and worked hard to achieve mastery in the area of percieved quality. For this effort, we won the quality award at one competition. Unfortunately, our team's skills were still developing, and so we could not quite pull off a stunning victory like in 2017.
This year was spectacular. The game was amazing, we were very excited at every moment, and, although we did not move to district Championships, we still left feeling like winners. The game, FIRST Launch, was a very unique game featuring many interesting elements. One element we were exceedingly excited about was the climb. That year, the climb consisted of the ability to get a robot above the plane of a box and fully supported by said box. Not on the box, just above its plane and fully supported by it... That got us thinking: if we could deploy two wings on either side of our robot to lift our teammates, then get our robot and theirs above the plane of the box, we could score even more points. We constructed a vacuum system that grabbed the top of our box in question that was powerfull enough to lift 3 robots. Unfortunately, our chain system was not. In the end though, it was really cool to see our robot repeatedly lift itself with a glorified suction cup. We won not only the quality award, for our robot's spectacular appearance, but the creativity award for our unique ideas. When we leave the expected behind, we guarantee fun and excitement!