Collaborative Robot Design Project

[coreyjon]

Ok, I've mostly been a watcher on these forums, never really initiating anything, but I've kind of been thinking of this new project concept and I finally decided to give it a go.

We all have seen what a team can do in 6 weeks, how complex and intricate the robots can get. My idea is to bring anyone interested into a virtual design meeting. As many people from as many teams who are interested. The game is the same as this year, and after seeing other designs, and seeing what works well, and what doesn't’t, along with the strategies that work the best, come up with the "ultimate robot" for triple play. I would like to keep the design time to a week or two. The reason is I want it to stay within the bounds of first, and In order to do that we should constrict the time we have to design. The goal is to produce a full 3d model, and cad drawings. I honestly don't know who would be interested in doing this. So I guess this project depends on interest, if there is enough interest, I will set up everything to facilitate the design 100% on line.

The Goals:

1) You thought it was hard to design a robot with everyone in the same room, wait until you are dealing with people possibly in another country!

2) Presentation skills will get a boost as you present you ideas to a large group of people (hopefully).

3) Learn to come together as an engineering team in a short period of time. In the real world of engineering you will not always work with the same people, and this presents a challenge in and of itself, because now you are dealing with people who you just met, and you are expected to work with them. Not everyone's opinions will be the same, and it will take a lot of patience, but in the end I believe you will be better at adapting to your working environment.

4) Free time killer, not that any of us have any, but if you're like me, designing things is fun, and I think this will be a fun experiment.

5) Since you will be working with people who you've never worked with before, you will hopefully be exposed to new thought processes and ideas that perhaps you might have never thought of.

6) To learn about the engineering processes involved with designing a robot. I know everyone involved with this has most likely been involved with the design of a robot, but I am also willing to bet that not everyone has been involved with the actual engineering that goes into assuring the parts will function as planned.

Who knows, this could turn out really good, and we might have a lot of fun. Doing this project 100% on line presents a host of new challenges. Some company's work this way, maybe not 100% but a high percentage is done on line. A company I know does it in this way, Perhaps they are working on a project, well, the engineers here in the US will work on it during their day, then transmit there files and notes to another firm in say Australia, and then again at the end of their work day to Scandinavia, then back here to the US so that when the engineers come into work, on their computer is waiting for them more plans, and notes to continue to work off of. I know that we will face many of the same challenges as not all of us are in the same time zone, and we all have other obligations like school, and work.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, or even if this will work, but if enough people are interested, I mean truly interested in attempting such a thing, let me know about it, and Perhaps we can set it up. It would be nice to do this before the nationals, but it dosn't have to.

The more I think about it, the more ideas I seem to come up with. If there is truly enough interest, and we do finish before Nationals and have decent time, and if we use the kit gearboxes and chassis (for speed) how neat would it be to all go down to nationals, and while there build the robot in the pits and actually compete with it. I know this is even more unlikely, but I thought I would plant the seed of imagination, because you never know where it will take you, and frankly I believe nothing is impossible.