Keeping an Eye on the Big Picture

[Kevin Leonard]

In order to keep tabs on our design, we have design meetings often during "prototyping season". I think this part of our design process can be separated into two sections:

When the design is based on the prototypes
And when the prototypes are based on the design.

I know this year we came to one point where we came up with the basic design of how the robot would function.
Before that day, we had prototypes of all sorts of different shooters/hoppers/collectors. After that day, we knew our robot was going to have a linear hopper, we knew we'd be going with the roller collector, and we knew some other subsystems that would be necessary.
After that day, we prototyped better packaging for the shooter, a side belt to bring the discs up to the shooter from the collector, our hanger and hard stop, and how to lift and lower our tray.
After that one design meeting, we knew what each subsystem would have to do, and how it would have to be integrated. We also knew to no longer prototype the bucket hopper, and to no longer prototype the 180 degree shooter.