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Each year, Team Titanium builds a competition robot that is within the guidelines for that year's game. Our first three competition robots: Elevation Station, Force, and Force II, played into a niche element of the game. For 2010, we changed focus with Force 3. In 2009, we also built another robot - Titan - the Guitar Hero playing robot. For more content concerning each robot, make sure to check out the Videos and Photos sections of the site.
2010 - Force 3
Story: Force 3 focused on scoring as many soccer balls as possible during the game. Our powerful kicker allowed us to kick precisely aimed goals from all over the field, and we often took advantage of the autonomous period of the game by scoring up to three goals from across the field. Our backstop allowed and hammock allowed for control over the balls that were being returned to the field. We made it over the bump with the assist of coding, whose design was described as one, "that made the bumps almost go away," by Rockwell Automation's Sujeet Chand in the announcement that we had the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award at the World Championships.
Game: The game for 2010 was Breakaway [see game animation]. The 2010 season was the most successful year thus far for Team Titanium, and we thank everyone that helped make it possible. At Kansas City, we faced a combination of field and robot problems. Nonetheless, we reached the semifinal round in an 5th-seeded alliance with Team Driven (1730) and Robocats (1785). We finished with a record of 8 wins, 6 losses, and 1 tie. At the Minnesota North Star Regional, we were very excited to win a regional! After a close battle for the first seed throughout the qualification rounds, Team Hammond (71) picked us, along with How 'Bout Dem Apples (2667) to form an alliance. We went undefeated in this tournament with a record of 15 wins, 0 losses, and a pair of ties that came in the finals.
At the World Championships, we were also very successful. After the qualification rounds, we were the third seed, and formed an alliance with The Pascack Pi-oneers (1676) and Robotiators (888). An unusual event occured in the second quarterfinal match where a kicked ball from 888 was lodged in the ball return bars, which prevented balls from returning to the field [see video]. The match was replayed, but a problem that prevented 888's robot from functioning brought Team Chaos (1421) onto the alliance for the remainder of the tournament. We were defeated in the finals for the Curie Division, and had an overall record of 13 wins and 4 losses.
Story: Titan was created during the summer of 2009. The inspiration for building a Guitar Hero robot came from seeing the very popular Guitar Hero robot that National Instruments had on display at the 2009 World Championship in Atlanta. Titan uses a web camera and sophisticated programming to play the songs just like the NI bot, but also has very different hardware. After lots of fine tuning, Titan can play many songs at expert level with 97-100% accuracy.
Game: Titan was not created for any official FRC competition, rather as a public relations tool. However, he can play a different type of game: Guitar Hero III, and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for the Nintendo Wii at any level - from easy to expert.
Story: Our niche with Force II was delivering "empty cells," from the outpost in the middle of one side of the field, to the corner. We did not have to drive from the outpost to the corner - we could just shoot the ball ~33 feet to the corner with our catapult! In addition, "moon rocks" and other game pieces could be brought up from the ground with a roller system and loaded into the catapult. It may appear to be a rather short robot, but when the catapult is fired, the height reaches just short of the maximum 60 inches that the rules allowed.
Game: The game for the 2009 season was named Lunacy [see game animation]. We reached the semifinal round in the Minneapolis 10,000 Lakes Regional, where our record was 9 wins and 6 losses. In Kansas City, we reached the quarterfinal round with a record of 4 wins and 5 losses. At the championships in Atlanta, we were in the Archimedes division with a record of 2 wins and 5 losses.
Story: Our 2008 robot, Force, was all about speed. Using mecanum wheels, Force was able to speed laps around the field in seconds, and earning points for each lap. Special care must be used while driving this robot, as taking tight turns too fast can make it tip over, and damage can be caused to both the robot and whatever it runs into if it is going too fast. A bulk of the height on the robot was added for the sole purpose of knocking off trackballs from their position on the rack.
Game: 2008's game was FIRST Overdrive [see game animation]. Force participated in the inaugural Greater Kansas City Regional tournament, getting to the semifinal rounds with a record of 9 wins and 3 losses. We also participated in a tournament in Denver, where we managed to be finalists in the competition, with a record of 12 wins and 3 losses.
Story: This was the very first robot that many members of the team had ever built. The niche element this robot focused on was lifting the robots of other alliance members off of the ground to earn bonus points at the end of the match. This was accomplished by having a set of ramps on each side of the robot that unfolded when a button was activated. Another feature on this robot is the arm/hand, which was used to pick up and place the inflatable inner-tube game pieces.
Game: The game for 2007 was Rack 'n Roll [see game animation]. The team traveled across the state to St. Louis with this robot to compete in our first FIRST regional, finishing with a record of 4 wins and 5 losses.
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