Battle Cry!
Written by Tom Keegan on June 23, 2006Battle Cry was one off season competition attended by the Gaelhawks over the summer of this year. Held at WPI in Worchester, Massachusetts, team 230 was represented by a select few team members and several adults. At first, there was some confusion about who was to drive and operate, seeing as the designated drivers and operators could not attend, but that was soon straightened out. 230?s reliable human-player scored valuable points for the alliance during all the matches. An addition twist was added to the game for this competition; a target was set up in the middle of the field, and the point was to hit it, and gain ?ownership? of the target. A team had to hit it twice to gain possession of this target: once to make it neutral, and another time to take possession of it. This added an extra 10 points onto the alliance?s score at the end of the game who had final possession of the target. The first few matches were trial runs for the newly dubbed drivers and operator. A strategy was soon created, and the Gaelhawks were later chosen for one of the alliances in the quarter finals. The first match went smoothly, but team 230?s robot was knocked out in the beginning of the second match due to another robot?s autonomous ?attack?. This affected the rest of the match and resulted in a win for the other alliance, even with the penalty points for excessive force. The Gaelhawks were knocked out of the quarter finals by this match, and watched with good sportsmanship as an alliance led by team 177, the Bobcats, which included teams 176 and 839, went on to win the competition. The Gaelhawks might not have returned home with any awards, but they did come home with the great experience of a fun robotics competition.
