How do you design your robot?

[Gui Cavalcanti]

For the last few years, 422 has used the same tired method to design our robots, and it doesn't work that well anymore. Here's the breakdown:

First, we show the game to everyone and make sure everyone understands what's going on. We then do some group brainstorming to try and get people thinking about what they want our robot to do. After that, we break up into small teams, each responsible for designing a robot and "general" subsystems (claw here, tank tread drive, etc). We usually then vote on a design, which I now think is a bad idea.

From there the system really seems to break down. Once a design has been voted on, we break up further to teams to attack each individual subsystem, responsible for fully designing it. Last year it was drive train, arm (which had nearly 5 moving assemblies), and control systems.

Anyway, enough of that. It doesn't work. 20-30 people show up at the first meeting, who design the robot by commitee, but only 10 or so are left to turn concept into design and construction. That just doesn't work anymore.

How do you all go about designing your robot? Do you have a lego building competition? Do you let your engineers worry about it? Do you have a select few on a "design team" that hands off the concept to the "mechanical team" or some such?