We are now busily working on this year's robot. We decided to have an iterative schedule this year such that we would build 3 iterations of our robot throughout the build season. As usual we are slightly behind schedule since we have not quite completed iteration 2. We do however have a working drive base with complete electronic and pneumatics systems. We have brought our base to our practice area a couple of times and have worked on traversing bumps.

We have been exploring using the CAN bus for controlling the Jaguars this year but have been running into some difficulties with it. We also have been doing some work with getting the camera image on the Driver Station, but we have found that it has a significant delay such that it will probably not be possible to drive solely from it yet it will be helpful in order to see into the driver's blind spots such as behind the bumps or other robots.

With only 17 days left of build season and only 12 days till the deadline for this site and the Chairman's award submission, we are eagerly working to finish everything on time!

Bash at the Beach was our first fall tournament, and a small but eager crew made the trip down to Connecticut. New students took on some of the drive team roles.


River Rage always brings a mix of emotions, as the game that was announced almost 10 months before is played for the last time. We all have one last chance to see what our robot can do.

It was a great opportunity for some of the new team members to participate in a competition for the first time, and they were brimming with excitement. This year we gave every student that attended a turn on the drive team, and had a student do all of the drive coaching.

This year River Rage played the Lunacy game in a 2 on 2 format, with no outpost stations used. This insured that all human players had an ample supply of balls, and the chance to score a super cell. The field included quite a few high quality machines and teams, many of which could score faster than our robot could. We found ourselves working hard to shut down the more dangerous machines. In a peculiar twist of scheduling, out of the 26 teams in attendance we were scheduled to compete against the Force team (1073) in 4 of our 6 qualification matches. Although they could score effectively, we discovered that our traction control was more effective, and three times we ended up pinning their robot in a corner where a human player from our alliance could have their way with them. Because the schedule was running behind we did not get to face them for that final qualification match, but it was already enough. We went 4-0-1 and took top seed. We selected Gael Force (126) as a partner and moved into the double elimination playoff. We made it to the finals of the Winners bracket before succumbing to CHAOS (Team 131) and the Funk Zombies (1474, Tewksbury Titans) After a brief detour through the top of the loser's bracket, we faced CHAOS and the Funk Zombies again for a best two of three final. Again they got the better of us, but by a narrower margin. We continued to lean how to defend CHAOS, finally getting the best of them in the second playoff match. By the final match, we and Gael Force had mastered the midfield two-on-one pin, and were able to run away with the match and the tournament! An amazing finish to an amazing year!

Different from past years, we started the post-season with Battle Cry at WPI. Usually that is where we peak as a team, after GSR and a couple of other post-season events, but this year Battle Cry was held early (and Beantown Blitz was not held) due to interfering work on the respective facilities. We went 4-3-0 in the qualifying rounds and lost in the quarterfinals.


Mayhem in Merrimack was the next competition in the spring. It is always one of our favorite tournaments! For several years we have tried to have a second robot available so more of the team members could compete. But this year, scheduling turned out to be very challenging, with more than half of the team involved with SAT testing that day. Only three students (Sarah, Brittany, and David G) were available to compete, none of whom had previously been on the drive team in competition. Fortunately Brittany's younger sister Lindsay came to watch, in our second match she was pressed into service as the second human player for our alliance. Welcome to the team, Lindsay! This brave group brought our robot in at #4 seed out of 17.

By late in the day many of our team members had escaped from testing and trickled in, with the Francoeur ladies passing the human player role on to Justin, and David passing the driving to Tim while David also did some human player work. In the playoffs we chose the PVC Pirates, had two ties, and ultimately made it to the final match of the losers bracket before bowing out to the #2 alliance. The robot continued to operate mechanically without major issues, although the lighting and some software issues forced us to rely on manual targeting nearly all day.

We continued to work on the shooting ability of the #2 robot to get ready for Nationals. With thanks to Team 40 and their sponsors we also got in a bit more practice at their reconstructed field. Upon arrival in Atlanta we modified the #1 robot to catch up with the one at home.

We started off with a loss in our first match, but amazingly went on to win the next 5, rising high in the rankings. Our focus shifted from marketing ourselves to preparing in the event we would lead an alliance. But in the next to last qualification match on Curie we stumbled. We dropped to the low teens in the standings. Alliance selection was somewhat disappointing, since we were passed over. As the third highest ranked, unselected, team we were asked to stand by as an emergency replacement for the playoffs, but we were not called.

The last day of the Granite State Regional was extraordinarily exhilarating and made the MAYHEM of the build season worth it! After finally completing all of the qualifying rounds and their replays, as well as the subsequent alliance selection everyone was eager to progress to the quarter-finals! Unfortunately we then found out that the last match had not been correctly entered into the system before the alliance selection, and it would have to be done over.

That was eventually completed and allied with The Red Devils (87), and Kaizen Blitz (1276), we commenced the quarter-finals prepared for thrilling competition and the challenges to come! We were defeated in both of our quarter-final rounds. The finals concluded with the victory of the Rhode Warriors (121), Buzz Robotics (175), and The Bucs (2621)! Congratulations to these phenomenal teams!

After the last round of the day, the awards ceremony took place. We concluded the long day with winning the prestigious Chairman's Award! We were extremely excited about this because we did not expect to win. You can watch our video that we submitted on our videos page. We are now eagerly awaiting our trip to Atlanta in April! In the meantime, we will be spending the next few weeks fund-raising and preparing for Championships. This past weekend was immensely rewarding!

Furthermore, we'd like to express our appreciation to Kaizen Blitz and The Red Devils for their partnership with us at the Granite State Regional!

Wow! Two days of the Granite State Regional have already gone by! We got our camera tracking working today and we are improving with practice. We went 4-2 in today's matches and ended the day seeded 10th.

Also, at today's award ceremony, this website was awarded the Website Award! In the Judges words: "The Website Award Recognizes excellence in student-designedl, built and managed FIRST team websites. ... An awesome team has been selected to win this award." We are very excited about this and are eager to compete in tomorrow's competition.

Thanks to BAE Systems and the Tough Techs team for the Unveiling event they hosted last night!

Lots of teams were there, and more of the robots were at least partially functional than in some previous years, with several pretty much complete! Lots of interesting drive and shooter designs were unveiled. We can't wait to see how well the different ideas work.

We were among those that did not have everything working together yet; work continued after the unveiling event concluded, and is getting closer to around the clock...

Its hard to believe that ship time is less than 100 hours away!