How do YOU start designing?

[KenWittlief]

the engineering design cycle doesnt always work?!

EEEEEEEK!

to use data driven analysis you have to design to the worst case scenearo, NOT to the best case / homerun / max possible score - that is not the proper way to use data driven analysis

but you are right in one aspect - DDA only tells you WHAT your robot needs to do to win - it doesnt tell you how

last year if you didnt get to the wall first and knock half the boxes on your side, you would have an uphill battle for the rest of the match ( you would have to get bins from the other side, where you cant see very well, and bring them to your side - very tedious and time consuming)

but if you cant figure out HOW to get to the ramp fast or HOW to knock half the wall over - thats another problem (step 2)

fortunately data driven analysis works here too - you can graph out how fast you can get to the wall with the amount of HP you have available for a 130 lb bot down to the min (50 lbs maybe?) you can graph out your acceleration for a curved path, a V turn, jumping over the railing...

you can perform tests and see if its better to hit the wall high or low, if you need something like wings or if a bar will take the whole wall down - to get some of the data for the design step you will need to do some experiments

but I guess thats what the whole program is about, right? if you know what the most important function is for a robot to win, and your team cant figure out how to build such a machine, then the better team will beat you - the team that can design one.