[KevinB]

I think that our team has (after SEVERAL failures) finally began to get good at this aspect of the competition. Last year we built a stacker that had a quick autonomous mode and had good pushing power to end on the ramp. The only major design flaw we had was not making arms that extend horizontally to hit more boxes in the auton mode.

We've determined that each year there is always ONE thing that all winning robot alliances MUST do. Last year, that task was hitting the boxes at the beginning during auton mode; in 2002 it was being able to grab, maneuver and defend the goals; in 2001 it was balancing the bridge.

Our strategy is simple: Figure out what this thing is and make a robot that does it extremely well. Once that's accomplished, augment the bot with extra features capable of performing other tasks.