Team 449

Team 449's robot has been almost completed, and was shipped by the deadline. It arrives at Landover on Monday. A full thirty pounds of equipment were withheld, including the throwing system, the code for which will continue to be refined until the DC regionals. The robot now has a powerful dumping system, and the turret is expected to work as well as was intended during the design phase by the competition.

The entire robot has been completed and tested, and found by the drivers to work satisfactorily, with the exception of the throwing system. On 'playday', the system got stuck once and most of the time failed to operate as anticipated. As a result, large portions of the code are being redesigned and rewritten.

The throwing system consists of a camera, a rotating turret, and a short arms with a cup on the end. All three parts failed to operate on playday. The camera spent too long to detect targets, and often failed to do so altogether. The turret, as a result, moved jerkily and too quickly. Finally, a ball ended up on the throwing arm's limit switch at one point, preventing the arm from being able to throw.

Most of the problems with the throwing system were cleared up by the ship date, and the main focus is now getting the camera's frame rate to increase.

The Team 449 robot also possesses a powerful dumper (added in a few hours after playday), which can dump short distances in several directions. The thrower operates independently of the dumper, so that both can be used at once.