Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Hi, I'm new to ChiefDelphi, but I've been browsing it for several months. After a couple searches of this site, and on Google, I wasn't able to come up with many good solid breakdowns of the FRC 6 week season. I was wondering, could a few teams post breakdowns of their 6 week schedules for our team?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

330's typical breakdown:

Week 1 (current): Strategize and get some requirements for the robot together.
Week 2: Nail down the last requirements and accept robot ideas.
Week 3: Get a final conceptual design and CAD.
Week 4: Check out ideas that aren't solid and see which one is best. Start building robot.
Week 5: Build. If something goes wrong, fix it.
Week 6: Build and practice. Attend a pre-ship scrimmage.
Ship the robot.

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

What our team typically does:

Week 1: Analyze the rules, figure out how the game might play out, talk about strategy, discuss robot attributes we want, figure out how one might incorporate those attributes into a robot, figure out what attributes are most important

Week 2: Prototype different mechanisms for the robot, begin to test and compare them

Week 3: Practice with different prototypes, decide on what is the best and will be used for final robot

Week 4: Practice with "winning" prototype, figure out what changes to make, begin constructing final robot

Week 5: Constructing and practicing with final robot

Week 6: Practice lots- use this to test and tweak final robot. Attend a pre-ship scrimmage, make any last changes to the robot based on this experience.

Then ship it!


This is a good general guideline to go by, but every team does it differently, so it is by no means the only way. Good luck!

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Check out MOEmentum at www.moe365.org . It is a week-by-week newsletter to aid first year teams, suggesting where your team should be at each week of the competition and giving lots of help and suggestions. What is posted now is actually last year's newletters. It will be updated each week for this year's game, but last year's will give you a good start for your scheduling.


The direct address is: http://www.fsrobotics.org/moe365//mo.../moementum.php

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Historically, 1075 has tried to get at the very least a base chassis done (ie. aluminum TIG welded) by the end of week 1, we try to spend no more than 2 days doing initial design. We find that if we wait till week 2 or 3 to start building, we would never find the problems and such in time. Of course, historically, we've just skipped the whole CAD phase and went straight for building it. CAD seems like it would take a whole lot of time that could be better spent building and refining, at least in our eyes. Its as it was said above, different teams do different things, and whatever works best for your team and gets the robot in the crate 6 weeks from now is the right thing to do.

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Typically, 540 spends the first two days (Saturday and Sunday) strategizing and proposing designs. We narrow down those designs and prototype for week 1. By the end of week 1, we have a working design and begin to build for weeks 2, 3, and 4. By week 5, we hope to have a finished robot to practice with.

-edit-
Oh and we also put the new wheels on one of our older robots so our drive team can begin practicing, but that's specific to this year.

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Week 1: design, prototype, prepare drivers and Human players
Week 2: Prototype, begin building
Week 3: Building
Week 4: Building, Testing
Week 5: Testing Testing, Pratice Pratice, Break the robot
Week 6: Build, Test, Pratice

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Thank you all for your quick responses! Today we are having our organization/strategy meeting, and I will be working with a mentor to keep our team on schedule using Microsoft Project. (That's why I wanted to know how other teams do this)

This is actually our 3rd year with FRC, but I just joined ChiefDelphi yesterday.

Once again, thanks for all the help!

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

create a Gant chart, our team does it every year, and it breaks down the whole 6 weeks, it's on our website: http://www.shazbots.org/business.php
and click on either the photos or the excel download for "2009 build season gant chart."

this way, your team can follow a strict schedule so that the mechanical team isn't spending too much time and the programers don't have time for the robot...

best of luck :)

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

I do not recommend ANY team to use the following schedule:

Week 1: Study the game, design
Week 2: Start building, working on the set design
Week 3: Change a few ideas, but continue working on the overall design
Week 4: Find out that either a rule, or technical block has shunned our original design. Back to the drawing board...
Week 5: Realize that we have a week to rebuild our entire superstructure
Week 6: [Relatively] Finish building, program, limited testing, start controls

That's how ours roughly go. This year we're working towards a better system.

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Simplified schedule:

Weeks 1 - 5 Design and Build 90% of the Robot
Week 6 Design and Build the other 90% of the Robot

Re: Breakdown of 6 week schedule
 

Day 1: Strategize
Day 2: Construct Playing Field
Rest of Week 1 through Week 3: Design and Construct Drive Base
Week 3 - Week 6: Design, Build, PANIC!, calm down, Integrate Base and Manipulator, Test (hopefully!)

Software development runs simultaneous to Robot build on a schedule all its own.