[KenWittlief]

something we found to be very usefull is to have someone record our matches with a camcorder, staying zoomed tight on our bot

then after the match we can review the tape in the pit (we brought a 10" LCD monitor)

this allowed us to see things that you dont notice during the matches, and things the drivers cant see from where they are

for example, last year by carefully watching the tapes we noticed our 'flying squirrel' was folding back when it hit the wall, so it wasnt taking out as many stacks of bins as it could have

in engineering, data is everything - if you can play back each match, in slowmo if necessary, you can see exactly what your bot was doing.