[CJO]

As a member of a team which had serious cash flow problems,

We have had any number of robots which looked a lot like overgrown erector sets, and we had one robot which looked (and functioned) like a real robot. Did we spend more on it? Only a little. Our actual real costs of materials were about $1200 for the robot chasis, which I contend that any team should be able to afford. The way we made it functionally excellent was by spending time, time and more time. How much? Well 3-4 of use lived at our machine shop for 3.5 weeks. We also made it excellent by refusing the "good enough" mentality. Any piece which earned the appelation "good enough" was immediatly thrown away. Our robot was neither anodized nor powder coated, but it ran perfectly. Through two complete regionals and all of the elimination matches (through the finals at 2 regionals) we never had a single mechanical problem* because we put time and thought into our design.

The other thing I see is teams getting into ruts. A decent basic design comes along and then everyone copies it. We (and the other really good robots) threw a lot of the "established design" out of the window for the really good designs. Some of you may recall heated discussion here a little less than a year ago debating that our robot would never even move. But we actually tried something, as opposed to just going with what other people do.

* I should note that our treads wore out, but they were planned as replacable, limited use parts