[Al Skierkiewicz]

Peggy,
The suggestions on strategy first are very important to driving design. When discussions get bogged down, prioritizing helps. This year for instance, we discussed the relative advantage or disadvantage to picking up tubes from the player station or from the floor. When we used students to play the game, it became obvious that a human player can be fairly accurate in getting the tubes downfield, which shortens the time to score. Once picking up from the floor became a strategy choice then design followed. Some of you have noticed that we did not use crab this year. Again a strategy decision led us to believe pushing and speed were prime for this game. As a result, platform stability was achieved with wider spaced wheels, allowing for high peg scoring in minimal time. This robot was perhaps our fastest ever. When in the design phase it helps to layout all ideas on a white board and then look at the relative merits of each. Is this design faster, more robust, easier to program, easy to maintain? Some parts need to be prototyped and that is part of the design process. Some decisions are driven by experience either from your own team or those of others. At some point all of this brainstorming causes allows some design ideas to rise to the top. It is easier to make choices when there is less to choose from.