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Unread 15-02-2012, 07:34
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wireties wireties is offline
Principal Engineer
AKA: Keith Buchanan
FRC #1296 (Full Metal Jackets)
Team Role: Mentor
 
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Re: The Ultimate Game-Breaker Robot: 2012 Edition

Quote:
Originally Posted by IndySam View Post
The GDC intended robots to be balanced on top of the bridge. Sitting on a piece of structure that is solely designed to help prevent problem with the balls getting stuck is obviously not what they wanted.

This update could have been seen coming from miles away.
Teams that proceeded to build a troll bot were taking a calculated risk. It was theirs to take. IndySam (and myself) thought the risk was very high, others in this thread thought the risk acceptable. It turns out that the risk (this year) was too high.

Identifying and mitigating technical risk is a classic engineering exercise. The older (and hopefully wiser) one gets, the more careful one gets (hopefully). I love to undertake risky novel design approaches but I NEVER do so w/o crystal clear guidance from my customer (which usually comes after a informed, precise query) and a contractual promise (more money and time) my efforts will not doom the project. The goal (professionally) is to deliver on time, under budget AND to get the customer to come back with more work.
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