Round 1 (29 Jan 2001):
VS: Team 43
Result: Double Loss

Description:
Scorpio correctly oriented itself and turned towards the center platform.  The extendible arm did not deploy as planned, and thus was unable to knock the center ball over to our side. Then the robot backed up and got stuck trying to spin in a circle. The other robot did nothing, as their team members forgot to turn on their batteries.

Round 2: 11:00AM (1 Feb 2001)
Result: Victory 3-2

Description:
The initial orientation of the robots in this round was facing the center platform. Because we did not have confidence in our open loop navigation to turn 90 degrees and consistently swallow balls located on either end of the table, we decided to use the qualifying version of our code when the initial orientation was either towards or away from the center platform. This code causes our robot to turn towards the center of the table, deploy the arm, and sweep the center ball towards our side of the table. Since our robot was so large and used differential drive, a series of turns was needed to accomplish this. Thus our robot took 10 seconds or so to sweep the first ball of the table. We were competing against a stationary robot that deployed a gigantic arm that spanned the entire table. However, their arm deployed in the wrong direction, missing the platform by 45 degrees. Thus our robot was able to execute the slow sweep maneuver unhindered. Having swept the center ball, the outcome depended on where the two dropped balls ended up. Both came to rest on the center platform, so we won 3-2. This win sent us to Round 3, held later the same evening.

Round 3: 6:00 PM (1 Feb 2001)
Result: Loss 3-1

Description:
The initial orientation of the robots in this round was facing away from the center platform, so our qualification code was used once again. Once the round began, our robot backed up slightly towards the center platform in order to give itself enough room to turn around. Unfortunately, it backed up slightly too far and lodged the steerable back wheel against the center platform. Without any time outs in the code for this initial movement, Scorpio stayed in that position for the entire round. The other robot was able to navigate to our side and throw one of our balls back to their side, and thus we lost 3-1. We came away from this round frustrated, as the particular problem Scorpio encountered had never happened before.