[pmangels17]

I think there is one piece of advice missing from this thread.

On DAY 1, print out five or six copies of the rules, ALL THE RULES, from every part of the manual, not just from the "robot" section. We keep all these books in the shop, and many students bring laptops to the shop. We spend the first day (kickoff day) prototyping and hashing out loose ideas. We create a list of the things that we want our robot to do, in a prioritized order. We do not, however, define how we are going to do these things, just that we want to do them.

This is all after every single team member READS ALL THE RULES. I apologize if this sounds rude, but it is the truth. Reading the rules is the most important part of kickoff.

Then, the week after, we begin working out the how.

Make sure you order the parts you know you will need as soon as possible. For example, we usually know within a few hours what wheels we are going to use. We order them that day, because it is then one less thing to worry about.

We also start work almost immediately on the CAD of the robot, starting with the drive base. Though we usually have a rough idea of what the drive should look like, different games may require special accomodations, and those are taken into consideration as well.

After the first week, we try to to drive system quickly and effectively. We build an electrical panel out of our usual materials as soon as we know what space it will go on, whether that space is ready or not (made from clear 1/4" corrugated polycarb, 2 sheets woth perpendicular channels, edged in 1/2 x 1/2 by 1/16 thick U-Channel).