[Dan Petrovic]

Compared to last year we are WAY ahead of schedule. It's a wonderful feeling. We had a driving chassis earlier this week, but the Banebots transmissions have been giving us a bit of grief (Who hasn't been getting grief from those transmissions?). So we had to fix those today.

Out of the years I've been on the team we haven't had much time for any software integration after the robot was done built. 2005 we finished the bot, stuffed it in the crate and that was it. The integration took place at our first competition. 2006 we finished the bot and attempted to got some software integration done, but the electrical box had some problems. Some victors were broken and the fact that it was a box made the matter far worse. It was a pain to get your hands in and out, let alone a screw driver to replace that victor.

So... last year was the preparation for a major step in this team. So many things went wrong and we learned so much. We changed the design process, we have a good schedule that everyone knows about, we strayed away from having an electrical box. Now it's all nice, neat and easy to see.

You really can't have a bad year. The only way you can is to come out of it and not learn anything.