Robots by committee

[Warren Boudreau]

On S.P.A.M. it's not so much design by committee, but configuration by committee. We spend the first two or three days discussing ways to play the game, settling on a team game plan. We then discuss devices to execute our game plan and settle on a configuration (drive train, arms, other devices). At that point everyone who participated has agreement on the game plan and robot general configuration. We then turn the designers loose to execute the design. While they are making drawings, ordering material and all that, the rest of the team is busy with protoypes, game strategy and human player practice.

So far, it's worked pretty well. Everyone gets to have input to the robot. The actual execution of the drawings is left to those who like to do that stuff.