How many colleges have teams?

[archiver]

Posted by Jon, Engineer on team #190, Gompei, from Mass Academy of Math and Science and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Posted on 5/17/99 6:44 PM MST


In Reply to: An outline of the MIT team (#97) posted by Frank on 5/12/99 7:07 PM MST:



This is my first year with WPI but i've learned a bit about this team so i'll share it with y'all.

The WPI team has been in existency since back in 1993 (rug rage i think...), and its membership is made up of around 40 'students' (MAMS juniors and seniors & WPI undergrad and grad) and 5 'coaches' (i call'm grownups).
The robot is designed and built by the 'students' (mostly the HS kids in brainstorming sessions) and everyone who wants to learn to use a machine gets to. The actual machining is done by whoever has the skill needed to make it happen and the actual building happens in a WPI machine shop.
The drivers and human players are HS kids, the on-stage coaches are wpi, and the grownups end up bestowing those tid-bits of knowledge that can only be learned by experience.
All of the branches of the team have students which share the responsability with either a wpi or coach representative.

The team seems to have a good deal of variety to it as people move in and out of the reach of the team.
We have a range from wide-eyed HS juniors and WPI undergrad who've never seen the competition to veteran WPI undergrad that came from the HS level with 4 years of experience already!


Travel
------------
We went to the Philly and Hartford regionals, and Orlando for the grand-finale.
During that time between shipping deadline and regionals, we designated the Travel Team which was composed of the drivers/human players (squad 1 and squad 2), WPI/HS pit crew, mini-intelligence branch, and a grownup to reign over the chaos.

For Philly, the travel team rented a 15pax van and drove 5hrs from Worcester to Philly on wednesday while the rest of the entourage took a comfy bus and showed up fashionably late on friday to serve as a cheering squad in eliminations.

For Hartford, we're close enough (