[Joe Johnson]

I agree with Mike S. above. The most important thing is to decide what we want our machine to do before we even begin to think about how we will be able to do it.

Most years, the way to maximize your team's chances of having a good robot is to figure out what is the rare skill that your robot will have that most others will not have.

Having that rare skill and being able to perform it well is one of the keys to being able to rank high in the seeding rounds if you have some luck with partners or to being drafted by those that are lucky in the seeding rounds in the case that yours runs out.

Our students, teachers, and engineers are pretty good at making the robot do what we want it to do. The trick is deciding what we want it to do.

My 2 cents.

Joe J.