How long does your team plan?

[Lil' Lavery]

I'll give a bit more detail on 116s process.
Kick-off: Full team meets (along with alumni, members of the community and school) to watch the kick-off. Short discussion afterwards. Most of the team goes home, but some stay (mainly leadership and alumni) to mock-up game pieces field elements. EVERYONE is expected to have read sections 3, 4 & 5 (typically the Game, Robot, and Tournament) of the manual by the next day.

Day 2: Full team meeting. Begins with brief recap of game. Most of the day is spent playing "Stu-Bots" (where students enact potential designs and strategies) and discussing (lots of discussing) the results.

The remainder of Week 1 is spent broken into small groups brainstorming and going through basic designs.

Week 2 is reaching a final design. It involves selecting a robot and strategy (as each group has assessed the game differently, but the "strategy team" often has great weight in determining which design we select). Our actual design typically involves systems from different designs to maximize the total effect. Detailed design on components begins at the end of the week.

Week 3 is component design (and the beginning of fabrication if time permits). Each subgroup produces designs for their system, and feeds them to a central "integration" (CAD) group to ensure there are no conflicts with other systems. We should also have our frame welded by the end of week 3.

Weeks 4 is almost purely fabrication (with some assembly if we use off the shelf or KoP parts).

Week 5 is finishing fabrication, assembly, and integration of the systems.

Week 6 is finishing assembly and integration, testing, and driver training.


We try to get a lot accomplished during the first weekend for several reasons. One of the key ones being that many alumni are in town before their next semester start, and often like to attend meetings. They are a terrific resource for both doing manual labor (such as field construction) and robot and strategy design. More we can abuse them, the better!