In 2006, many of the founding seniors had left, leaving a few experienced team members but mainly a large crop of inexperienced freshmen. At first, the team went for a design that attempted to accomplish all of the aspects of that year’s game, which involved picking up and shooting seven-inch-diameter foam basketballs. The design ended up with some last-minute fixes to attempt to make it to work, such as a rotating ‘agitator’ in the middle of the hopper to try to fix some of the problems created by the design.
The first regional the team went to in 2006 was SVR. Overall, the only part of the design that really worked effectively was its drivetrain, which was basically a copy from the previous year’s drivetrain in itself. However, the drivetrain (and defensive skills of the driver) was sufficient to be the last pick at the regional, being picked by 254 and 581. The alliance went on to win SVR.
For the Sacramento Regional, the team decided to take a completely different approach. They stripped off the ineffective shooter and clogging hopper, and replaced the weak belts with a single belt driven by one of the leftover shooter motors, and adding a more functional hopper. These changes were done on the Thursday before competition and took until Friday morning to finish, causing the team to miss its first official match. This match was lost. However, the team went on to win all of the other qualification matches it was in at the regional to earn a rank of 2. The team was knocked out in the first round of finals matches, however. The design carried over to Championships.
The team did yet another reconstruction of the robot over the summer. The large group of now-incoming sophomores largely led the project to rebuild most of the robot over the summer, incorporating a hopper that worked with both a shooter and intake from both throwing the balls in and picking them up from the ground. The design worked well, but in elimination rounds at CalGames, the robot suffered a catastrophic failure to the drivetrain, knocking the team out of competition.
