Quote:
Originally Posted by nitneylion452
... we were very excited for the start of the qualifying round. We had very high expectations for this year because our robot was a great deal more sophisticated this year.
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Higher levels of sophistication frequently require higher levels of execution. For a young team to be able to do this, they need:
Experienced mentors
A lot of help from an experienced team
A fall test bed for those added sophistications (experience)
A second robot to work out all the bugs (experience)
My advice would be to continue to work on those robots over the next year, and compete at some off-season events. This will give you the experience you need in order to be able to pull off a "more sophisticated" robot. Notice I took the "great deal" part out.
Also, if you get the chance, check out 1503s robot this year, and all of the 330 robots. In my opinion, 330 year after year achieves a design elegance above most of the competition. They build successful robots that are just complicated enough to be great. I don't think it is a coincidence that the year they got particularly complicated (2009) was not their best performance.
In Michigan this year, a couple of the most successful young teams built fairly simple clean designs that were robust and extremely effective (2137 and 2054). 2054 was such an elegant solution for this game, that many respected mentors I know had a ton of praise for this team. I don't know what 2054s program is like, but I do know that 2137 did a lot of off-season events last year to improve their robot and team. This additional effort is akin to lifting weights in the off-season for football. It really paid dividends this year as they are one of the best teams out there.