The Green Egg Robotics team took steps in its journey to return to Dallas to defend its 2009 World Championship. Having won the Vex Championship in May of '09, the team had already earned an automatic bid to the event. However, the team members felt they would return to Dallas only if they had a robot that was worthy to compete in the international field of outstanding robots from around the world.
In "Clean Sweep" teams are challenged with the task of competing in an alliance of 2 robots versus 2 opposing robots to clean their half of the wall- divided playing field of 3 different sized and shaped balls. The winner is determined to be the teams with most balls (points) on the other side of the field at the end of the 2 minute and 20 second match.
Green Egg Robotics (GER) completed building Fred III the day before the tournament due to special challenges in building the robot. This year's design is a transformer style robot that "transforms" and expands at the start of the match to allow for greatest functionality in the game. Due to the last minute completion of the robot, the team had very little time to practice prior to the competition.
Competition at the event was strong with teams from Leominster, East Longmeadow, Worcester and Manchester, NH to name a few. Each team had 6 qualifying matches. Rankings were calculated throughout the day and at the close of play Green Egg Robotics ranked 1st with a record of 6-0. By virtue of winning the top seed Green Egg Robotics had the first draft pick in each of the 2 draft rounds. They chose teams 131B, CHAOS, the #4 seed from Manchester, NH as their first pick and team 817B the #21 seed from East Longmeadow HS in East Longmeadow , MA as the second pick.
The GER alliance of 3 prevailed in the finals against a very strong threesome of teams from the Leominster Robotics team lead by 549B, 549F and 549C. The final series of matches went to the rubber match with the Green Egg Robot and the CHAOS robot outscoring the 549B and 549F duo in a back and forth match. The Tournament Champion trophy went to the GER alliance qualifying them for the World Championship to be held in Dallas.
Other Awards presented include the Creativity Award and the First Seed Award given to Green Egg Robotics. The Excellence Award was given to team 549E, the Jr. Devil Dawgs Automonous Skills Competition was won by 817A Sparticles and the Driver Skills Competition was won by 131B, Team CHAOS.
For a video of Fred III, version 1 in action click here.
