[Brandon_L]

What seems to be working for us (were still in the 'learning' stages, and constantly changing/iterating/gaining resources/mentors ect)

1. Attend Kickoff
2. Read the game rules, out loud with entire team
3. Read the robot rules, out loud with entire team
4. Brainstorm Strategies
   -Include two values with each strategy
   1. Difficulty with your teams resources/abilities, scale of 1-10 (10 being most difficult)
   2. Estimated points value, decided upon by various simulation methods
      -I like to start with a "Godbot" strategy and a "Simple as possible" strategy, using them as boundaries.
5. Select a strategy based on what earns you the most points, yet isn't out of your capabilities (i.e. low difficulty, high reward. We usually settle on a difficulty value of around 4 or 5, but honestly if you find that a strategy with a difficulty of 2 gets you more points then a strategy with a difficulty of 5 you struck gold.)
6. Conceptualize your robot as a whole system that plays decided strategy (as a team)
7. Create a wanted/needed features list for each component. This becomes your prototyper's bible.
8. Prototype out any unanswered questions (i.e. 2010 'how difficult is it to control a ball'? and mechanisms based on said strategy.
   -Don't be afraid to iterate
   -We usually start with proof-of-concept prototypes and evolve them up to final prototypes, filtering out some ideas or gaining others along the way. Critical measurements are taken from final prototypes and transferred into our CAD drawings.

We usually end up with a full mockup of our robot, as well as individual prototyped components, that get meshed together into a cad model. For example, this past year:

Full robot mockup


Final shooter+intake/conveyor protos (not the best picture but it was all I could find)


Final Product