[craigcd]

This year at the Bayou Regional in New Orleans I noticed that several of the rookie teams (and some veterans) were still building on Thursday morning. We plan on trying to reduce this problem by inviting all the rookie teams to the “Bayou Regional Jump Start Build”. The first Saturday after the kickoff all the teams will show up at a high school gym with their kit of parts. We will have all the engineers and mentors there along with the materials (wire, chain, etc.) and tools necessary to build the robots. By the time the teams leave that night we plan to have all robots programed and running/driving.

This will give the teams a tremendous advantage by having a robot to show at their school and a working platform to prototype and test the various manipulators. The teams can then modify and upgrade the robots to suit their specific needs.

We plan to have crash courses thorough out the day in pneumatics, electronic board fabrication and design, programming, transmission and drive train design and tool safety.
We also plan to use the event as veteran team training in how to mentor rookie teams. The teams will have several robots from past years to look at and also be able talk with members from other teams. I am looking for additional comments and suggestions