Who should help us

[Haywire909]

Hi, I am from the Haywire team in Pocatello Idaho. We need to know what the best mix of help is for the designing and building of our robot. We have access to a wide variety of different help, but we don't know who to ask. Will someone please help us?

[Billfred]

The answer is: It's hard to say.

I mean, you can bust out a team of engineers and crank it out, or master the art of ghettofab and still be competitive. But if you can have someone (whether student, engineer, or teacher) who has some knowledge in electrical circuitry, mechanical principles, fabrication, and programming, you should be alright. Bonus points for pneumatics.

However, don't discount other fields. An art teacher to help get the robot running with everything else for the Imagery Award can be very useful, for example.

And of course, you can always ask us on ChiefDelphi. We usually know what we're talking about.

[Jessica Boucher]

Originally Posted by Haywire909

Hi, I am from the Haywire team in Pocatello Idaho. We need to know what the best mix of help is for the designing and building of our robot. We have access to a wide variety of different help, but we don't know who to ask. Will someone please help us?

My answer? Anyone you can get!!!

It's great that you have access to a lot of different people! Try to recruit from wherever you can, so you can prepare for the inevitable paring down of people. As much as you explain it to them, some people who agree to do the season may not be able to stick around because of other constraints (and you don't want to be trying to find these people during build season, because you'll be too crazed with other stuff).
I feel that the best way to handle this is to hand out a rough timeline for the year and explain how many hours are usually necessary. Another team may have something like this already made up for you to work off of (hopefully someone reads this and responds with one for you).

Also, just because someone might be of a particular profession doesn't mean that they can't help out in other areas. The trick is taking a good look at the "human capital" (aka people) you have and utilizing them to the fullest without overdoing it.
For this, I would create a questionnaire for all mentors agreeing to the season, particulary asking them for their education, past job titles or experience, groups/associations that they belong to, and their hobbies. Not only are you getting their contact info, but you're able to look back and make connections (in building the robot, but also in networking and fundraising!) you never would have guessed by just looking at someone. (This also doubles as an easy way to make a new mentor comfortable: since you already knows he likes to waterski from the questionnaire, next time he comes to a meeting you can say something other than "Hey, nice weather we're having".)

Finally, there's really no one-size-fits-all answer to this. Here's a link to a thread from a while back that had teams describe their "mentor makeup", or "what their mentors do when they're not working on the robot". As you can see, no two teams are completely alike in who they have helping them, and all of the teams that responded have participated (hence they've built a robot), not to mention many of them do quite well for themselves.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[Warren Boudreau]

Engineers, programmers, and such are all good to have as mentors on a team. But don't overlook the people who actually make the parts. This can be anyone who is handy with woodworking and/or metalworking.
And, most of all, don't forget the "team mom". Somebody has to make sure that everyone eats during the all-nighters just before shipping and that the team t-shirts get washed during the competitions and all of the other unappreciated tasks that need to get done but nobody thinks about doing. Team mom's are the best asset you can have.

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by Warren Boudreau

And, most of all, don't forget the "team mom". Somebody has to make sure that everyone eats during the all-nighters just before shipping and that the team t-shirts get washed during the competitions and all of the other unappreciated tasks that need to get done but nobody thinks about doing. Team mom's are the best asset you can have.

"Team Mom's" are also known as NEMOs (Non-Engineering Mentor Organization) and include "Team Dad's" as well! NEMOs are the second half of team mentors - one half typically deals with the engineering/technical aspects and the other half deals with all the other tasks that support a team... and in small teams they may be the same person!

[Pattie]

Hi Pam. You'll probably want to have a mix of mentors with skills in the areas of using AutoCAD, mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, software engineering, and machinist/welder. Some people possess one or more skills. That would provide a good skillset needed for designing and building the robot (specifically the chassis, drive train, controls/electronics and the programming).

Don't overlook anyone's ability to give to the team - some of our best ideas came from a businessman who thought he would be no help to us - we convinced him to stay and his ideas were simple to implement and quite effective. After we had spent days brainstorming - he spent one evening with us and we had a great design. He was quite surprised at how much he was able to help us.

Parents are very important because they always seem to know someone who knows someone who has access to this or that, - and they can help support the team with meals during the build period - we found that if we let the kids go home for dinner they never came back - maybe thats not true for most teams, but it happened to us so we started providing meals to keep the kids working.

Pattie