Biggest Change

[sanddrag]

Sort of like a Qotw: (but not imposing on the original thread series)

What was the biggest change in your team this year? The way the robot was made, the way your team is run, facilites, etc... Please don't say autonomous mode as that was a big change for all of us.

For my team, I'd say the biggest change was the amount of food always in the work area. We never went hungry. This was due largely in part to the parent support group newly formed this year too. Also this year we did some very intense fundraising we never had to do before.

[D. Gregory]

The way our robot was built was alot different. We measured once, cut twice, then CADed once. The robot design was more of a group effort as was the construction. Our team had diverse ages as opposed to our 80% OAC(Senior) team the year before. Instead of having one or two supervisors shoulder the load, we split the supervising up between a large amount of people.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by sanddrag
What was the biggest change in your team this year

Huge huge huge change in the way our team is run.

One of the vet students said it's finally a democracy.

Duct tape is the force that holds the universe together.

[D. Gregory]

That picture has made my day. Thats one thing you will never see at a guys house.

[Alfred Thompson]

We had a 600% increase in the number of girls. That changed a lot of day to day things. It also helped us with the other big change. Last year (our rookie year) all we cared about was making the robot work. This year we tried to do a lot more.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Alfred Thompson
We had a 600% increase in the number of girls. That changed a lot of day to day things. It also helped us with the other big change. Last year (our rookie year) all we cared about was making the robot work. This year we tried to do a lot more.

We are two rival schools on one robotics' team. 2 years ago we had 2 students from RUHS, and about 7 from MCHS. They had 2 girls last year.

This year 8 girls, double the number of students from RUHS than there is from MCHS. 29 students total.

[AlbertW]

yeah, same here. the number of girls on the robotics team jumped from 1 to 5

also the fact that we're doing FIRST this year... but thats just a minor change

[Powers]

ours was the engineering and complexity... first year we didnt build a tank drive and the arm we built is pimp (i only say it, because i built it)

[Ryan Albright]

Yes are first year we had tank drive. So we wanted to get away from that we have to wheel steering in the front which helped alot this year. The arm was sweet with the pivot points we could drop the arm all the way down to go under the bar and which could help us pick up the boxes in any orientation

[Alaina]

I would say having a girl on the team...go me!

[Jeff Waegelin]

Our biggest change was actually getting techincal assistance from our sponsors. Before, we never had engineers, machinists, or anything. The only help Visteon gave us was money and one parent, who isn't really even an engineer. This year, we had a GM guy helping with design, as well as machining and welding help from the guys at the Tech Center. It's nice to be able to draw up some plans in CAD, run them down to Warren, and get the finished part back the next day... though it's still fun to do things ourselves, it gives us more time and more options.

[MichalSkiba]

Our teams changes from last year were the following:

1. Less mentor support
2. 2 girls who loosely associated themselves with robotics (an infinate percent increase from last year!)
3. Less was in people's head and more on paper along with the math to prove it (help us avoid many problems and in the end we a solid robot)
4. Our electronics guy graduated last year and I didn't have any time to them so they were a mess (caused our controller board to refuse a radio signal, thus we lost the first few matches at the Canadaian Regionals)
5. Far fewer mechanical problems, more electrical problems (the opposite of last year)
6. Pizza consumption fell significantly (it was no longer complimentary on Saturdays)
7. We started building much sooner then last year (first week of January)
8. We lost many OACs (seniors) last year, and our core group of compitent people shrunk to about 6. Unfortunatley we don't have much interest from younger grades, and as a result our team might not exist in a few years if this continues.
9. We got away from tank drive and switched to wheel chair drive.
10. Less botching (ie measuring more and cutting less)
11. What really helped this year was a 3D model of our robot within the first two weeks. We knew exactly what to do.
12. As a result we had a week before shipping to troubleshoot, make spare parts, and train drivers, unlike last year, were we only had an hour before FedEx came.
13. We actually built prototypes!
14. Because our team shrunk, team members had more to do (both good and bad)
15. More money! and we qualified for Houston!

[Koko Ed]

We started the pre season in December and did our team building activities such as Sumo egg carts, egg drops and just getting introduced to one another. It made a huge difference.
I felt the team wa more together this year and worked seemlessly to plan, design and build X-tinguisher. Our kids were great!