Quote:
Originally Posted by jds2001
One of the things that I found REALLY helps is that immediately after kickoff, we go to the offices of our sponsor (my former employer, I've moved on but I'm still involved with the team, almost the only mentor on the team NOT employed by them) and brainstorm designs. The output of that meeting is a shortlist of 2-3 designs that we think will work well. Then we start prototyping with wood, and figuring out what does and doesn't actually work. Occasionally we'll have to go back to the drawing board, but not that often I've found.
Keep in mind that this is a team that is based in NYC, lacks pretty much any mechanical engineering mentors, and has the stupid restrictions that the NYC public school system places on us. Are we the most competitive robot out there? No. But do we field something that at least I'm proud of every year? Yeah.
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Interestingly enough, our teams seem to share a lot of characteristics, such as going to a sponsor's office for a brainstorming session on day one and having to deal with school restrictions. However, we do tend to jump straight into more complicated prototypes rather than sticking to simple initial steps, and that's where I think we can draw some inspiration from your team. We'll definitely have to go with the more simple wooden prototypes that you mentioned, so thanks for that advice.