Chuck the Robot fights valiantly but injuries bring him down

2014 Team Pronto with Chuck

By Wes Proudlove, Team Pronto

Team Pronto competes in Portland

Shorewood's own Team Pronto competed last week in Portland at the first PNW regionals for high school robotics. There were 155 teams that registered for the PNW and these teams have been competing for two months for a spot at the Portland event. Team Pronto did qualify to attend, ranking 25th, beating out some very highly sponsored and well funded teams from private and public schools as far south as northern California and as far east as Montana.  

Chuck started out a little worse for wear

Team Pronto's robot Chuck came into the Portland event a little worse for wear from the many previous matches he had played in at previous events. The students had six hours starting Wednesday night and ending Thursday morning to not only replace broken and damaged parts but to rewire Chuck's controls in hopes of stop the electrical demons that had cropped up during some matches at previous events. Testing late Thursday morning provided the team with hope the repairs had done the job and Chuck was ready to make his creators happy.  

Double teaming was destroying Chuck

Competition rounds started Thursday afternoon and continued for 11 hours Friday and another 4 hours Saturday. There were 63 teams at the Portland event and each round that a team plays they are randomly placed with two other alliance teams to play against three other teams in a separate alliance. With teams being randomly sorted to compete, sometimes you get partnered with complementary teams and other times robots don't align very well at all. With Chuck being a strong offensive robot, the best alignment would be either with other scoring robots or very defensive robots, but luck had it Chuck was usually the strongest robot on the field and this caused the other teams to double team him.

Chuck battled until the end

A change of strategy for Chuck

After a few rounds of competing it was evident something had to change. Team Pronto decided, through the great scouting of the team's scouts, that Chuck could give up scoring for a few matches and begin to become a defensive machine in hope of stopping the double teaming that was destroying Chuck's chances of moving on to the finals.

The new strategy worked for a while but Chuck took some huge hits

This defensive posture worked for a few rounds. Chuck collected some wins and brought down some alliances, but in the end it was to late. Chuck had sustained some huge hits that left his hardened frame bent and twisted and his drive train crippled by open circuits. The electrical demons had returned but this time they decided to cause the radio system to go down during a pivotal match. Team Pronto and Chuck were still ranked very high out of the 155 teams but had dropped below the cut off point to travel to the World Championships later this month.  

Nothing to be ashamed of

Team Pronto has nothing to be ashamed about. They built Chuck in six weeks, competed great, and even hosted an event at Shorewood. Team Pronto ranked far higher than teams with budgets 10 times greater than theirs. Team Pronto would like to thank its mentors, parents, sponsors, Shorewood High School, and the Shoreline School District.