So this year the RoboBroncs tried to be really methodical about designing our robot. Last we built a good robot only to find that capabilities we had given it were not those that a robot really needed to be successful. This year we decided to record all the decisions we made and why we made them, and here are the results:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2457
Just as a note I did not include our end effector investigation or our motor/gearbox selection, because both were a little skimpy without the physical prototypes and testing recored.
I wondered how our system compared to that used by more experienced teams, I don't know how a typical design process would work and based this off of my experience with the Project Lead The Way program at my high school. Does anyone else have records of their design process??
In case you wanted to see, this is the robot that this design process created:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sturFfjv_bU