Our teams changes from last year were the following:
1. Less mentor support
2. 2 girls who loosely associated themselves with robotics (an infinate percent increase from last year!)
3. Less was in people's head and more on paper along with the math to prove it (help us avoid many problems and in the end we a solid robot)
4. Our electronics guy graduated last year and I didn't have any time to them so they were a mess (caused our controller board to refuse a radio signal, thus we lost the first few matches at the Canadaian Regionals)
5. Far fewer mechanical problems, more electrical problems (the opposite of last year)
6. Pizza consumption fell significantly (it was no longer complimentary on Saturdays)
7. We started building much sooner then last year (first week of January)
8. We lost many OACs (seniors) last year, and our core group of compitent people shrunk to about 6. Unfortunatley we don't have much interest from younger grades, and as a result our team might not exist in a few years if this continues.
9. We got away from tank drive and switched to wheel chair drive.
10. Less botching (ie measuring more and cutting less)
11. What really helped this year was a 3D model of our robot within the first two weeks. We knew exactly what to do.
12. As a result we had a week before shipping to troubleshoot, make spare parts, and train drivers, unlike last year, were we only had an hour before FedEx came.
13. We actually built prototypes!
14. Because our team shrunk, team members had more to do (both good and bad)
15. More money! and we qualified for Houston!