[Jim Zondag]

Jared,
In general we were very happy with the performance of this robot.
If I had to do it over again, what would we make differently?

My #1 item would be to try to reduce the amount of elevated mass on the elevator. Our design was very good, but there are a variety of design points in the Collector, Forearm assembly, and Elevator stages which could be lighter, and this would improve the dynamic performance of the robot in a number of ways.

This is only the second time in our history where we have done a direct drive powertrain. This has a number of advantages, but the disadvantage is that it makes final drive gearing changes more difficult if you do not have the ability to make custom gears quickly. Our initial ratio choices were good and very compeititive, but iteration would have been harder than I am used to if we had had to make any design changes on this detail. In the future, we will probably do something a little more flexible, or simply make a family of final drive gear sets when we make the initial parts.

There are a thousand small details that could be made better, but seriously we put a big priority on construction speed. How fast we can make it often trumps some of the desire to make things more precisely. A winning robot is not a winning robot unless you have winning drivers too. You need the time to develop both.