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Re: pic: REX (Team 4334 - Alberta Tech Alliance)
All teams should stretch to do something they have not done before, regardless of what they have done in the past. That is how teams like 118 never fail to impress with their technical prowess (even when their solution is ruled illegal). The goals need to take into account the resources available and the abilities of the team members. The value in "failure" is the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and improve one's decision making process. However, to learn from those mistakes, one must posess enough background knowlege to determine what went wrong. When one grossly over-reaches and fails, one may as well conclude that it was due to someone using "the dark arts" against them.
The team I was working with this past season is one where they would have been better off with more "modest" goals. They had limited resources and few team members committed to doing the work (2 out of 15). At the two regionals they attended, they spent much of their time lurching around the field, trying to drive straight. Eventually, they got good enough at driving that when they were asked to play defence against 67 in their last match at Archimedes to hopefully help 973 advance to the elimnation rounds.
They needed to focus on understanding how to do some of the basics such as drive train design and control and how to use some basic sensors. Fortunately, we were able to convince the the team that they should not try to design and build a turret. The team members who lacked of focus and commitment used rather haphazard design processes and did not learn how to analyze a problem make proper design decisions. The team's chances of learning from their mistakes are further diminished since a large percentage of the team, including their one programmer, has graduated. They are probably best to keep their goals modest for the forseeable future.
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