How do you guys run early brainstorming?

[big1boom]

During the first week, we manage to pin down strategy, design, as well as CAD

Our entire process is run by 2 student facilitators (1 Senior/1 Junior). We start off Monday of Week 1 by going over strategy (offensive, fast driving, ground load, minibot for this year). Pretty much, everyone can throw out ideas onto a whiteboard, and then we go through, and evaluate what we want our robot to do. Then, once strategy is hammered out, we go into basic robot functionality in small groups. The groups come up with ideas on what they want to do to accomplish the decided strategy. They come up with ideas like, mecanum drive, forklift style lift, roller claw grabber, launching minibot deployment. Each group has new students and at least one experienced member. After some time, the groups come back, and one of the new students presents the ideas. This helps them work on communicating effectively, as well as helps the 2 student facilitators combine ideas so that the whiteboard doesn't get cluttered. After all the ideas are pitched, they go back to small groups to decide if they want to incorporate ideas of another group. Then they all come back and present. We do this a few times. Eventually, most groups will probably agree on a general design, at which point, we break into subteams to go over specifics of the designs. This is when the subteams do napkin drawings, calculations, and other specifics. Eventually, all the subteams will have what they plan to do, at which point, we combine all the ideas into one cohesive robot, and send it off to be CADed while Manipulator subteam does prototypes of ideas.


If you have any questions about our process, PM me, and we can talk more in depth.