[Adam Freeman]

In general I would characterize the HOT team as mentor designed, student programmed, fabricated, and built.

Our entire team is involved in game analysis, strategy discussions, and initial design concepts and inspirations. The Chief Engineering mentors (Jim Meyer and I) lead the team lead the team through these discussions, but it is open for any student or mentor to share their general ideas. During these discussions we have had students come up with concept designs for specific subsystems (2011- Two pronged arm w/claw) or even overall robot design concepts (2009 – large hopper with roller system to feed a turreted shooter).

Once we split into groups (design, mechanical, electrical, programming, field build, chairman’s, and animation). The design group and the engineering mentors assigned to design, are responsible for generating the detailed designs for the robot. How involved the students are in the details of the design depends on the age, skill, and desire of the design students. Typically, our designs are 90-100% designed and “engineered” by the mentors. I say “engineered” because much of our design process is more intuition based, than cold hard engineering calculations. The students are exposed to our thought process tri-weekly as we design parts during our meetings. A mentor’s computer is typically displayed on the projector so that the students can see and discuss how and why things are being designed certain ways. We try to explain important parts of the design to them, so they understand how and why it will work. Our design students then take our 2D AutoCAD files and create solid models of the parts and assemble them from our 2D Assembly sketches, working with the engineer to understand how parts are supposed to go together as designed.

Our robots are completely student machined and assembled, with the mentors working alongside the students to make sure the parts are machined and assembled as designed. When issues are found we explain our mistakes to the students and work with them on how to correct them. We have full access to the main machine shop at the General Motors Milford Proving Grounds. Our students use the CNC mills, manual lathes, a waterjet machine, and sheet metal breaks to create the parts for our robot. The only thing the students don’t do is weld up parts (which we try to keep to a minimum).

For the past two year we have been 100% fully student programmed in both C++ and Labview. We don’t have any mentors fully trained in either language, so the mentors work with the students on prioritizing general robot functions, autonomous strategies, sense of urgency, backing up files, etc..

Why is this how we function?

1. This way seems to be successful for our team, both on the field and off. We have tons of former students that have become great engineer all over the country. Many that are still participating in FIRST.

2. This is hard! Even to our mentors. We are not designers, engineers, programmers, or machinists that do this every day. It takes us 6+ weeks to get these things designed, built, and programmed.

3. Our engineers are not as good at teaching the students to do the design, as well as we are at creating the designs ourselves and explaining them. I am jealous of the teams with engineers that can teach the students how to design and still play at an incredibly high level.

4. Our mission is to work with the students to inspire them to be interested and pursue an engineering education. Not to train them to be engineers. We feel we are achieving this goal 100%.