The missing feature: A common thread

[JesseK]

For anyone who can't make it to Karthik's 105-minute "Strategy" presentation in St. Louis on Wednesday, I'll go ahead and give you the first few lines in my notes from the last 2 years' presentations (summarized):

• His name is Karthik and his team wins alot. His teams proactively seeks to help other teams as well.
• When determinining where time and resources are spent, there IS a priority order on every team regardless of whether that priority order is explicitly stated.
• The #1 priority is the thing that MUST work every match to be able to do anything, and that is DRIVE TRAIN.
• The #2 priority is the FIRST thing the game piece touches before it can be scored and that is the game pieces ACQUISITION MECHANISM.
• Robot functions should work 100% and not be some over-constrained half-thought-out almalgamation of metal and motors.
• This implies that if priorities are out of order, then the pickup function may suffer the most due to spatial and weight constraints.

Ergo, if the first thing a team designed on the robot this year was a shooting mechanism then there's a good chance the intake mechanism was a secondary priority. That means there was less brainstorming time and more constraining factors given to that mechanism overall. I know that as Week 1 progressed, this is what wound up happening on my team.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by JesseK

For anyone who can't make it to Karthik's 105-minute "Strategy" presentation in St. Louis on Wednesday, I'll go ahead and give you the first few lines in my notes from the last 2 years' presentations (summarized):

• His name is Karthik and his team wins alot. His teams proactively seeks to help other teams as well.
• When determinining where time and resources are spent, there IS a priority order on every team regardless of whether that priority order is explicitly stated.
• The #1 priority is the thing that MUST work every match to be able to do anything, and that is DRIVE TRAIN.
• The #2 priority is the FIRST thing the game piece touches before it can be scored and that is the game pieces ACQUISITION MECHANISM.
• Robot functions should work 100% and not be some over-constrained half-thought-out almalgamation of metal and motors.
• This implies that if priorities are out of order, then the pickup function may suffer the most due to spatial and weight constraints.

Ergo, if the first thing a team designed on the robot this year was a shooting mechanism then there's a good chance the intake mechanism was a secondary priority. That means there was less brainstorming time and more constraining factors given to that mechanism overall. I know that as Week 1 progressed, this is what wound up happening on my team.

If you look at the original post, all the "missing features" related to game piece acquisition. Actually, that makes so much sense.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Ergo, if the first thing a team designed on the robot this year was a shooting mechanism then there's a good chance the intake mechanism was a secondary priority.

Alas, if only our shooter had worked as well as our drive train and ball acquisition mechanism...

[couvillion]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Alas, if only our shooter had worked as well as our drive train and ball acquisition mechanism...

Your robot is only as good as it's weakest piece.

Your team is only as good as it's weakest resource (students, materials, tooling, mentors, time, money, space). Powerhouse teams are alike in that they have all managed to have enough of these resource. Stuggling teams are short some place but each team may have a different resource that they need to try to increase.

Teams that know that they have all the resources need to succeed, can work to build a robot that can do what is needed to win. Those that don't focus on being able to show up.

Powerhouse teams aren't powerhouse because they build great robots, they are powerhouses because they build great teams.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by couvillion

Your robot is only as good as it's weakest piece.

Absolutely. This was a case of us thinking we could pull off something that ultimately we failed to pull off. On the bright side, we're overjoyed with our drivetrain as a base for future robots -- with some redesign and tweaking we think it will be applicable to almost any situation.

[Wayne TenBrink]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

On the bright side, we're overjoyed with our drivetrain as a base for future robots -- with some redesign and tweaking we think it will be applicable to almost any situation.

If you have a good general design approach for your chassis/drivetrains that can quickly be adapted to any game, that frees up a lot of time and brain power to focus on the "top end". It also lets you start building shortly after kickoff, which spreads the fabrication schedule. Chassis/drivetrain prototypes are great pre-season projects. I doubt many powerhouse teams build a chassis/drivetrain that isn't based on something they had previously worked with.