engineer bots

[Daniel Brim]

Personally, I don't really care how much student involvement is on another team; it's not my problem to tell other teams how to run.

However on a BCR note:

I am on a team that has about 10 students and 20 mentors. The balance may be pretty heavy, but all of the mentors are supplying inspiration, so it doesn't really matter. All mentors have different styles, so on different projects there are different styles. On design, there is not much student involvement in the actual pysical design, but all students have input on the conceptual design. If a student comes up with an idea, it will be heard; in fact our 6WD kitbot frame was mostly student designed. Actual building is probably 95% or so. Being on the team for my third year, I am noticing progression/inspiration in myself and others during this process. Programming is a bit mentor-heavy, unfortunately, but without them we'd probably have no code. Don't get me wrong, they are definately teaching the students, but some people learn faster than others. The concept for our autonomous (have tetra leaning on back of robot, have arm swing over the top, nudge that back under the center driver goal and then whack the hanging tetra) was from a student.

Overall, I like our balance. But heck, I wouldn't mind being on a 100% student built team. I also wouldn't mind being on a team with high engineer participation. As long as it gets across the message of FIRST, I could care less.

-Daniel