Today was the first day of qualification matches for us in the Curie division at the 2010 FIRST robotics championship. We played 3 games today, winning 2 and losing 1.

Today also saw a huge milestone for our robot. In our 3rd match, qualifier number 32, we were finally allied with robots capable of scoring for our alliance without our kicker's help and we were able to use our primary robot design for the first time this whole season. We locked to the tower, and deployed our poptop and drawbridge which allowed us to loop balls 7 times back into the home zone for our partners.

Our dampening system did as designed and allowed 5 of the 7 balls to be deflected to either the right or left depending on which way we chose. Two balls hit our poptop and were directed into the home zone, proving that adding the poptop since our Bayou Regional was a good decision. Every ball that comes down the rails into the middle zone will now get deflected back into the home zone if we are in position.

And with our handcuff system, we won't be dislodged from our position easily. We are so happy to see the large amount of design and work we put into our looper system finally pay off for us. Overall today was a good day, and we are looking forward to hopefully a few more good alliances in our qualifiers. We hope Curie is deep enough and we luck into a few more good alliances so we can loop, but we'll always have qualifier 32 as an awesome showcase. Good luck to all in Curie.

Click the Robot heading above to find out more about our 2010 Breakaway robot.

Team 2992 was a member of the championship alliance at the Bayou Regional. We thank our teammates, 1421 and 3364, for an effective and awesome partnership. We look forward to seeing them again in Atlanta.

Our robot design this year has a primary function and a secondary function. Our primary function was designed to be an effective mid-field looper robot. We have a damping ramp that catches the balls off of the return tower and then directs the ball down to our "drawbridge". The drawbridge has a flipper that can direct the ball to either side of our home zone. In order to stay at our post, our robot has a set of "handcuffs" that locks us to the tower.

Our secondary function is to be an effective ball possessor and kicker. We have a very effective vacuum ball possessor and a variable power kicker. Our robot is also able to change zones so that we can kick from any zone. We have several effective autonomous modes as well. For details on our design check the robot page, design section.