[MichalSkiba]

Our robot was designed to do everything - stack, go under the bar, knock over stacks, knock down the majority of the wall on the ramp during autonomous and king of the hill -ing. Our problem was that we were not able to do one thing really well. We qualified for the finals (our award), but most of our match performances were not very spectacular.

In my opinion, it is VERY important that your robot is able to perform a specific function very well. Afterwards, when you have a solid system designed, then you can flare it up with function. Any robot can knock boxs and take up space on top of the ramp quite simply by being able to drive around.

Picking that one or two function(s) on which your robot design will focus on should be dictated by your teams technical experiance. If a robotic arm will yield the most points and none of your team mates have any experiance with pneumatics or welding then its out of the question, settle for the next best function. 6 weeks is a very short period and it is a time in which you apply your knowledge as oppose to 'learning as you go' with overly ambitious plans. Its the time between September and the kick off where you try out something new [advanced multispeed drive systems - oops!!, guess you'll have to wait till the Canadian Regional (and Atlanta, lol)].

Judging by the past few years, and Houston, a solid drive system is manditory. If your robot can't push its way past opponents or get to the other side of the field quickly, then whats the use of having all the neat functions that you've worked on for the past 5+ weeks.

Our team spends the next 36 hours after the kickoff (the rest of the weekend) at someone's house brainstroming ideas. We give ourselves 5 weeks to design and build the robot. Construction should be finished by the end of the 5 week period and the robot will be tested. You won't know how well your design works untill you test it (preferably on a mock field and with pervious years robots in the way). !!!! Don't wait until your regional to find out that your multispeed transmission is locking up !!!!.

There are many rookie teams and teams which have little technical experiance. Expect that they will build a robot which will perform the simplest task possible - move and and knock over stacks - and not much else. Provided that your team can do it, you would probobly build a stacker. During heats your have your team mate defend you as you stack, avoiding low scoring matches where all the boxes where cleared off the scoring zones by the pushers.

Further advice from our misfortunes:
-when an idea is presented, have the presenter provide scale drawings
-if you need 4 pieces of something, make 6. Making spares at that time saves alot of time and keeps thier dimensions very simialr to the originals.
-have a solid electrical setup, our robot stalled many times and we lost countless heats because of that.
-encase sensative components in plexiglass/lexan.


Good luck this time round and we hope to see you in Atlanta.