FIRST Engineering Principles

[Rick TYler]

I've been thinking about some guiding principles for our FIRST team. These will be in two parts -- people and engineering approach. Here are my thoughts about engineering.

The First Engineering Principle of our team will be: We will build simple, reliable robots that finish every match and perform one or two things really well.

1. We will place reliability first in all of our design decisions.
2. We will develop a simple, robust chassis approach, and we will do so before the season starts.
3. We will limit the functions we tackle to two or three things at the most, and will focus on doing ONE thing really well.
4. We will finish constructing our robot early and will allow two full weeks for testing and training.
5. We will not waver. We will build the robot we designed and will make only minor design changes as we build.
6. We will always keep the construction deadline first in our minds.
7. We will never lose a match because we violated these principles.


Thoughts?

(Thanks to my teammates on 1294 and to mentor Larry Barello of Titan Robotics Team 492 for his sizeable contribution to this.)