Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
We built our practice robot first. That showed what didn't work properly.
Then we made upgrades as we built the competition robot.
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I'll elaborate: prior to this year, we never built our practice bot with the explicit intention of making it identical to the competition robot. That is, the two machines would have similar mechanisms, but the practice bot might have components made from wood instead of aluminum, it might use illegal motors, pneumatic cylinder geometry might be different, etc.
The problem with that approach is that you actually have to design two robots. If you don't make a concerted effort to keep the two machines as similar as possible, you will have to solve an entirely different set of problems for each robot to get it to work. And any amount of time you spend solving problems on your practice robot that don't apply to your competition robot is time you're not using to make your competition robot better. This defeats one of the main benefits of building two robots. It might be counterintuitive, but you build a better robot and save time if you go straight to designing your competition robot, rather than spending too much time on a "prototype" version first.
Having learned this lesson the hard way, we went into build season this year with the intention of building two robots to be basically identical. One of the main problems our team struggles with is consistent craftsmanship, and a key way we mitigated that this season was by making corresponding parts for each robot at roughly the same time. For the most part, we would build a part or mechanism for the practice robot, and after verifying that our methods were sound, we would immediately build a second copy for the competition robot. This helped ensure the same sets of hands were responsible for both copies of a part, which in turn helped ensure uniformity between the two machines.
In reality it didn't always go as smoothly as that, but those are the basic details. I think I can safely say having a nearly-identical practice robot was a big factor in making this our most competitive season so far. If you have any other questions I'd be happy to tell you more about our process.