When and how do you create a whole-robot design?

[Kevin Leonard]

After nailing down a few good prototypes week 2-ish, we began to try to integrate all of our systems conceptually, then in CAD.

I find that rather than trying to slap together three differing designs for three differing parts, make a system that is made to go together.

During build season we were trying to integrate our <90 degree shooter, a bucket hopper, and our roller ground intake. We discovered that the three wouldn't fit together well without significant testing and tuning to avoid jams and different angular adjustments.

Suddenly our driver had an idea- make one straight line path from collection to shooter without any complex elevation changes that could cause jamming or significant test/tune time. His design called for a straight line with frisbees lined up side by side up to the shooter with just enough room for 4 discs. In order to facilitate this, we just had to lower the entire tray's angle at the beginning of the match.

The moral here is that it is difficult to integrate systems that aren't meant to go together. Some teams can integrate differing systems extremely well- Code Orange's bot is basically what we wanted to do, just couldn't pull it off.

Know your team's strengths, based on your history and the group of students you have. If you don't have many programmers capable of creating perfect vision targeting- don't build a 987-style epic turret. Build one or two shooter angles. Develop one or two spots you can shoot from at least 3/4 of the time.

If your team can handle large load holding mechanisms- i.e. a climber this year- then build one. If you guys can build the perfect arm, then use one of those.

Anyway, now I'm rambling. Hopefully that helped a little. I would recommend watching Karthik's presentation- or at least looking at the powerpoint that he presents on the Simbot's website. twentyfour.ewcp.org is also a good blog to look at in terms of strategic design.

Good luck!