[ShadowKnight]

Our team last year made the mistake of going after the actual design and the nitty gritty (kind of) of the design instead of focusing first on what we wanted the bot to do, and deal with the physics later. We also had issues about organization because we had "comittees" but we met at the same times and people intermingled a bit mroe than they should have. The main problem was that we had a group of 30 people deciding whether the best way to stack was using a belt to bring up the boxes or a clamp and a plate to stack. This burns up extremely valuable time. We did not have the vaguest idea about how we would build our robot untill 2 weeks into our timetable, and it was only sketchy at that.

It is my belief that once the team decides on the basic design, those involved in the build team need to split off into their seperate groups and draw stuff out on paper, then come together so that we can combine stuff. This year, that stategy worked very well. We have a drive train and basic frame team, and an arm team, both of which are networked so that we have an idea abotu what the other is doing but we can do our own thign and focus on what we do best. In my oppinion, our team needed desperately thsi kind of organization because without it, we all go our seperate ways and nothing gets done. Ultimately, their needs to be a deciding authority. WHile that needs to be someone either than the mentors, it does need to be a person, or a few people, so that decision can be made, and made within time to implement those decision.

those are my two cents...