Rookie lessons learned and season summary

[staplemonx]

Here is a link to our full season summary. http://www.phillyrambots.com/?p=714

Here are the major lessons learned that we took away from the season.

The Rambots had a lot of learning to do this year. It started on day one with the Firebirds when we participated in our first brain storming session. They built spreadsheets that tallied the scores they assigned to all of the ideas they came up with for picking up tubes, driving, lifting tubes and many other design decisions that needed to be made. We went back and did a few trades of our own for our different ideas. The process that we had learned from the Firebirds proved to be very useful and helped our team select our final design. The Firebirds also emailed us their final brain storming spreadsheet so that we could compare our results with theirs. This spreadsheet allowed us to truly understand what next set of big lessons for what our goals were and what design allowed us to best meet those goals.

The next set of lessons that the team learned were all tool related. Many of us had never used simple tools like hand drills, jig saws or hack saws. So our mentors had to go through a lot of basics before we could really dig into manufacturing. This lack of knowledge also played a role in our design, meaning we purchased a lot of AndyMark extrusions and corners that were pre machined so that we would not have to learn and work at a level that would have been hard to keep up. But we took a hit to our weight and cost due to this decision and really hampered our ability to execute some of our really ingenious design ideas. Now that we have been through our first year, many of our juniors are ready for more of a challenge and we can build upon our basic skills learned this year. Working with Royal Assult also helped feed our appetite for more complexity in our design after seeing how many ingenious ideas they were able to execute with the help of a fully functioning machine shop.

We also learned about expectations. This year, our expectations were not fully aligned with what it takes to have a successful team. When we started, we talked about working two days a week after school until about 6:30. We are now very aware that this is not enough time to build a competitive FRC robot. We had to work very hard at the end of the season to get this robot ready to compete, that includes several hours on the Thursday of our first regional. This summer, we are going to work with school administrators to agree on a set of expectations for access to build space, access to tools, student’s schedules and fundraising plans. We feel that when this is accomplished, it will make a big difference in our robot capability, learning experience, and stress levels next year, if we can make that happen.

At our first regional competition, we learned about so many things; trouble shooting, time management, maintenance friendly design, the list goes on. We have made some changes to our code, our robot design, our deployment arm, our checklists and to our pit setup. These lessons will have direct impact on our performance at the World Championship this year and how we compete next year. We also learned how much fun FIRST is and how amazing it feels to be picked 6th overall to play in eliminations and play in the quarter-finals.

Lastly, we learned about teamwork and dedication. The amount of time we had to spend with each other created a lot of opportunities for laughter and for frustration. These moments allowed us to learn communication skills and how to better respect who we are and who our teammates are. We have a lot of room for improvement here next year and will be putting more effort into these critical life skills. We are the South Philadelphia Rambots, and we are here to make a difference in our lives.