Quote:
Originally Posted by Duke461
Basically what im trying to ask is, from an experienced student/mentor/coach's perspective, do you have any tips or advice as to how to go about the process of analyzing the game and appendages or special features of the robot. I understand this is kind of a vague question so bear with me, but for instance we figured out towards the end of Breakaway hanging was no where near as important as it seemed in the beginning. So what advice could you give to be able to recognize that before it's too late? (besides making a field) Also what do you think is a good time frame/schedule for discussion time, design/CAD time, building time, driving practice time, etc.
Thank you very much and good luck to all the teams out there.
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From my experiences (going into my 3rd year as a member), theres a few highlights and strong points our team does during build. Hopefully these help..
We Rank certain 'keys to the game.' Like mentioned above, we also play a human version of the game. We try to develop a strategy before a robot. Creating a robot and making your strategy around the 'bot idea is where you could go wrong.* After we weight the keys to the game, we start developing our robot ideas. (any robot idea) Once we have our robot ideas, we narrow them down using a decision matrix. We rank the designed robots in each key to the game. The keys are weighted and we times the key weight by the robot expected performance for each robot and each category. we then add up the totals and it leaves us with a good idea of which bot to go for.
*- Just because your team made something in the offseason, does not mean you have to use it. If it applies to your stategy, then awesome and go for it. But dont get caught with an idea that doesnt fit your strategy.
As for time frames, we usually discuss rules and game keys and strategies first 3 days in that order. We spend up to a week or 2 more to choose the design we want to go for. Once we have narrowed the bot choice to a few we typically have prototyped/mocked up the designs we have it between. Ever since the beginning of robot idea producing, we start basic cads. the Cads get more complex as we narrow the feild of bots down. Then, we try to get a prototype drive running (last year, we modifyed our offseason 80/20 swerve drive to match the format we would have for this years bot [we also used that chassis to test our kicker while we fabricated the actually robot chassis.])
A good thing to try to do after that is get the final bot completed with as many days lefts as possible, without rushing through anything. The more practice time the better, and a good rule of thumb is to actually try to break your robot during build season, so you can learn how to fix it during build rather than at the competition. Getting your bot done with time to spare also gives you a chance to improve it during build. (example: In 2009, we added a couple of bars to direct the moon rocks out of our dumper after we saw we had balls getting stuck in our hopper.)
One last thing, the more practice time the drivers get, the better. Try to go to as many practice matches as possible and try to get as much drive time as possible during build.
I hope this helps, and good luck this season!
-Matt G