You can often hear one of our team members, when we burn out a motor or cause it to smoke, exclaim “that’s the smell of failure!” But it hasn’t proved to be failure just yet.

The first time this phrase was used was when we were demonstrating at the FLL regional our FRC team hosts. WE had just gotten our robot driving around two days before the event, and we eager to get some drive time in. But we ran it so often and kids were always watching that we couldn’t just stop and disappoint any FLL kids. So we didn’t. But then we burnt out the motor on the arm. Luckily we were able to get a new one and replace it. I think the kids enjoyed watching us work and replace the bad one even more than driving! Plus we let some of the FLL kids try out driving our robot, they didn’t stop smiling the ENTIRE time.

The 23rd and 24th of this month we also encountered the “smell of failure.” When our arm runs into the group when the presets aren’t started correctly, our motor will smoke. So we’ll try not to let that happen again!

Good luck teams!