[Jon Stratis]

In our handbook we describe out method of choosing captains very clearly: The mentors choose, with input from the students. That input comes in the form of voting. Making design decisions is much the same way.

We empower our captains to make the overall decision of the robot. This occurs with after doing a cost/benefit analysis of all the ideas, eliminating those with too much cost for too little benefit, and allowing the team to vote on what they like best to help give the captains some guidance. They then empower design leaders for each mechanism to make the decisions necessary, which are often reached after discussion (I can't really call it voting if there are only 2-3 people involved!) with the rest of the design team for that mechanism.