Practice Chassis

[MrForbes]

Maybe you could practice designing and building chassis, as well as drive trains and mechanisms. There are a whole bunch of ways to make a chassis, and which materials and methods you should use might depend on what type of equipment and expertise your team has (or wants to acquire).

As an example, over the years we've built our robots with chassis made of welded steel, glued and stapled plywood, riveted or bolted fiberglass, and bolted or riveted aluminum. We don't have the equipment and expertise to use welded aluminum, which is what many teams use.