The First Seven Days of the Season

[Lil' Lavery]

A general overview of 1712's first week (usually spills over into week 2)

Kick-Off Day:

• Attend Local Kick-off
• Watch broadcast
• Pick up Kit of Parts
• Inventory Kit of Parts
• Discuss game as group until a common understanding of game is reached
• Compile questions about game
• Use rulebook to answer questions
• Scoring/point allocation analysis
• Dicuss/understand purpose of penalties (how to "break game")
• Create list of possible activities/functions for each phase of game
• Discuss possible alliance strategies (strengths/weakness of each)
• Discuss possible/probable robot archetypes (what functions will be popular, what functions compliment each other)

Meeting 2:

• Review game & rules
• Reassess anything we missed/interpreted incorrectly (this year, we didn't understand the hot goals properly during our kickoff meeting, for example)
• Work towards selection of a game strategy
• Develop a priority list (Need/Want/Wish)

Meeting 3-5:

• Create decision matrix
• Design Brainstorming (various iterations and discussions)
• Mechanism prototyping
• More detailed/critical analysis of proposed designs
• Evaluate subsystems in decision matrix
• Attempt to arrive at consensus design
• Start drivetrain assembly

Things don't always go quite as planned, and the schedule can shift around. We don't incorporate as much CAD into the early season as we'd like to, but we also don't know where we'd find the time or manpower.