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Unread 13-06-2016, 12:46
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Minnesota Lead Game Announcer
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Re: How many days do your programmers get with a fully built robot before stop build

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonKiddy View Post
Hello. I'm the lead programming mentor for Team 4930 and I'm looking for some advice. Our team isn't using any formal methodology/model for programming but I'd like to introduce students to Agile/Waterfal/Scrum/etc. However, after thinking about it some more I've realized that none of those may work due to how our team builds the robot.

We have a design team that CADs the robot, a mechanical team that puts it together, an electrical team that wires it up, and then the programming team does it's thing. Well, in reality it isn't that simple, usually the programming team gets the robot on the last Saturday before stop build day and it becomes a "get it working!!" day, rather then a real workflow. Most of that day ends up being an electrical/mechanical QA session done by the programmers; talons aren't on the stated channels, wires aren't connected, etc. Then a rush to deliver a programmed robot after QA. After stop build day more programming sessions occur without a robot until our first competition. This is where we really do the majority of the programming, but I'd rather be testing on our robot before we see if it works at competition.

I'm guessing this is normal? How much time does your programming team have with a fully built robot before stop build day?
This sounds pretty normal for most teams. I know my team likes to build a shadow bot along side the main bot. This allows them to tweak code and play with it as the students are building the robot. They also then have something to mess with in the dead time between build and competition.

I know this isn't conducive to teams with minimal funding or newer teams that are just trying to put a working robot on the floor. If that is the case, then you really want to aim for a design early in the process that will give your programmers 4 days to a week with a fully functioning robot and multiple weeks with bits and pieces (assigning channels and IO, playing with motors and pneumatics, ect.). Programming is super important to the success of the robot.
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