[Brandon Holley]

The mock-kickoff is a great exercise for your team to do. It allows you to really dig into a problem that will be very similar to what you will be doing when actual kickoff rolls around.

The best part about a mock-kickoff is if you do it in a way where students don't know it was actually an older FIRST game. Because you are a young team, you have the ability to present a game as if you designed it yourself. The reason I bring this up is that after you have gotten what you want to out of the mock-kickoff, you can surprise everyone and show off some robots playing that particular game you "made up".

This will allow students (and mentors alike) to see some of their potential ideas succeeding or failing in the actual game.


Another extremely useful exercise is to take dominant robots from years past and revere engineer them. Find out why that robot did so well in competition. What aspects of their design were integral to their success? Did they approach the game in a completely different way than everyone else? What were their weaknesses? You can also boil down to the nitty gritty details of their specific mechanical design and determine if its something your team could do.

Reverse engineering other teams robots will also intimately expose you to many other teams robots as opposed to just your own. You may be able to get a feel for what tends to work, and what doesn't.

Good luck!

-Brando