Team 20 was fortunate enough to have a returning mentor who worked along with some students enthusiastic who were about safety to rework our teams safety model. Not to say in previous years we had unsafe practices, but this year, we really stepped up our preventative measures and preparation, as well as emphasis on safety!
For example, we hand out "Safety Tickets" throughout the build season to any student or mentor who does something that is unsafe/potentially harmful, then at the big team meetings, we bring up what happened, how it could have gone badly, and how it can be prevented (we don't name names, but everyone knows who it was anyway, so the secret isn't well kept
).
We also took special care to make sure all aspects of our robot would be safe, even though we have LOTS of electronics, chain, moving parts, and weight, which at times posed a challenge but will prove helpful in the long run! Hopefully no robot related injuries this year
!
We make sure that we debrief the students before they come into the pits and they will only be allowed into the pits if they have completed debriefing and received the proper sticker. It would be tough to do a pre-competition debriefing because it is hard for many of the newest students to visualize what a competition pit is like, so best to do it at the competition! It was really cool going through the lines and seeing all of the safety judges with "Team 20 Safety Debriefing" stickers on!
