Practice Robot?

[Chief Hedgehog]

A team of 10-12 students is fine. However, how many dedicated mentors do you have? And how many hours per week are you meeting?

In terms of mentors, you need either need a handful of dedicated mentors, or 1-2 very regimented mentors on board with this endeavor from the get-go. If you only have 1-2 mentors, you will need a very strict build schedule with objectives clearly laid out ahead of time.

Does your team use a gantt chart? If not, this is something to look into working with this season (it will pay HUGE dividends in coming seasons).

What do you plan to use for a drive train? As you are probably aware, the drivetrain is the most time-consuming part of a robot build if you have not previously developed one. If you do not already have one mocked up I am assuming you will use the AM14U3 (great drive train, but you need 2).

Weekly Schedule - it is not that the second robot will double your build time, just the workload. If you plan accordingly, many components (if you CAD correctly) can be fabricated quickly. If your team does not have a robust CAD team, then you are going to struggle big time.

If you can head into Westtown with a team that knows your robots' limitations as well as it's advantages, you are a long way ahead of many other teams. What we have learned on 4607 is that this knowledge of what will work and what won't (and the circumstances you will face) is very valuable. As other teams are trying to figure out how their robot is failing, you are already beyond this and are working to improve through this obstacles.

Good luck this season!