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Unread 28-02-2004, 17:35
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AKA: Paul
FRC #0818 (Genesis '02)
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Re: [moderated] Collaboration

My biggest problem with collaboration? Feeling involved.

Last year, I was on 818's "Robot Support" team. We did all of the odd jobs that the team needed someone to do - building the playing field, making the crate, and so on. The biggest problem I had with Robot Support was that the five of us that made up the group had almost no input in the robot design. I ended up feeling useless and uninvolved in the small successes 818 had during last year's game. Needless to say, that's not a good feeling.

This year, I moved to our team's Electronics group. Almost immediately, things were different. My group was asked to contribute ideas, and we did so. We were presented with the final design...and then, four weeks into the build, discovered that our work so far had to be redone because someone had decided to change the design of the robot without informing us.

I'm not sure how to best communicate my point...I guess it'd be that it's hard enough to feel involved on your own team at times, and even a minor change can spell disaster. Collaboration would definitely make it much harder for students to take a part in robot design. I may just be pessimistic, but the end result I see for collaboration woud be a small group of experienced students and engineers from various teams making the majority of design decisions and leaving the rest of the teams' members feeling useless.

As far as design goes...This is a rather extreme example, but let's say that Team A, who is working on the drive train, decides to deviate from the original plan and give the robots treads instead of wheels. The message gets through to several of the teams in the alliance...but Team E, who is working on the chassis, never finds out. Now all of the teams involved would be stuck with treads that won't fit onto their chassis. Not good in any way.

Communication and involvement are hard enough to control on a single team...it would be a nightmare if you had to get four or five teams on the same track.

I have a feeling that I'm not alone when I say that I'd much prefer to be involved in a team where the students make the entire robot instead of becoming specialized in a smaller area - say, electronics - and allowing others to design the majority of their robot.