Practice Robot?

[angelah]

We are a small, low budget team with just a few mentors, and we build one.

We started building a practice robot two years ago when we had about 8 students. We did it again last year with about 15 students. This year we have about 30 students, and we will continue. (About 50% of our students are very dedicated each year.) The practice bot made a huge difference two years ago in our team's performance; in one year we went from ranking poorly and never being picked to captaining alliances and going to worlds, and the practice bot was at least half the reason.

The financial aspect was the biggest for us. We had to have the two bots share a few parts the first year. This meant a lot of work taking things off and putting them on, but it was worth it. We also convinced a sponsor to give us materials for a second robot.

A few days before bag, we had one mentor start on the practice bot. Our actual robot is 100% student built, but we relaxed that rule for the practice bot. One or two mentors and a handful of students built on it while our programming team (which consisted of one person, haha) worked with the real robot. It was finished the Saturday after bag night, and we were able to drive and break it for two weeks before we attended a competition.

It's been a great experience for students to build two robots. We do build a few drive bases and program them during the fall for practice, but building two full robots each year really gives them experience.