Design Period, THEN Build Period

[Joe G.]

I really like the idea, but maybe only have a week or two, so that you both have less time to do any prototyping, and less time to agonize over the fact that you can't do any prototyping. This would probably work best in a year with MAJOR changes to the KOP, such as the new control system for 09

[Nate Laverdure]

Idea: Extend the build season by a week, and then kick off the competition in phases. My sample build season schedule:

• Week 0 Sat -- Release VKoP; manual sections released: Communication, Team Organization, At the Events, Robot Transportation, The Awards, The Tournament, The Robot, Kit of Parts
• Week 1 Ongoing -- Several game hints are released throughout the week
• Week 1 Sat -- Kickoff presentation @ Manchester NH; game simulation released; manual sections released: The Arena, The Game
• Week 2 Tue -- Supplemental KoP items may now be purchased and ordered
• Week 2 Sat -- Physical KoP arrives; robot components may now be fabricated
• ...
• Week 8 Tue -- Shipping!

[DonRotolo]

I like the idea a lot, but 4 (additional) weeks of design may be excessive. We'd sure make good use of it with Inventor though. The holidays are not a great time to be doing robots, especially for the volunteers.

The 1 or 2 week design period proposed seems good, enough to be able to hash out ideas thoroughly and do some training but not enough time to get into overthinking it.

The VKoP would have to have some far better descriptions, photos and part numbers to make it valuable, otherwise we'd be just trying to figure out 'what is it?"

Don

[dtengineering]

I agree with the comments and ideas posted here. Figuring out a way to make something like this work in the FIRST context will certainly require an iterative design cycle.

While I appreciate the simplicity of the current six-week do everything model, and am happy to play the game under the current rules, perhaps we can brainstorm a way that we can have more time for design. In my classes I always force the kids to come up with a reasonable set of plans on paper before I let them start cutting or building, and I would like to see something like that for FIRST. (They can change their design if they run into unexpected difficulties, but they have to be able to explain what went wrong and how they plan to solve the problem before they get any additional material for a re-do.)

Jason