[Pat Fairbank]

Last year we couldn't decide between a stacker and a robot that could fit beneath the bar, so we got the bright idea to do both and have modules that we could swap in or out. It took forever to figure these out, and in the end it was our drivetrain that broke down, and we never used the stacker. Don't ever build a robot that converts between two different functions, because it takes twice as long, and chances are you will never use one of the functions.

We too plan to design our robot fully before building it; last year construction advanced slowly due to lack of communication of the design.