Build Timeline

[Karthik]

Many teams have different philosophies when it comes to managing the build period. Before you can decide on a schedule, you need to evaluate the resources at your disposal. How often and how long is your shop going to be open? How many students and mentors will be participating? Are your suppliers local, or will you be shipping parts in? What's your team's level of engineering experience? Do you need to prototype extensively, or can you trust yourselves to start building sooner? These are just some of the many questions that need to be asked.

The following is a presentation on running a FIRST team, which has a section on managing the build season. A proposed timeline is given, which has been used with much success by many Canadian teams.

http://firstroboticscanada.org/site/...ps/runteam.pdf

It's an aggressive schedule, designed for use by low to medium resource team with a simple robot design. It also works well for a high resources team with a more complicated design. The schedule stresses finishing earlier, to allow more time for practice and tweaking. I've found that the amount of time spent practicing and iterating is directly proportional to a team's success. Teams who are less aggressive during build, often end up using their regional as practice and tweak time.¹ To me, that's an expensive way to spend $4000. (And if you're only going to one regional, like 75% of teams, this is not a good situation to be in.)

The design freeze is much earlier than most teams use, but this a conceptual design freeze. What that means is that you're settling on "double jointed arm vs. linear elevator" as opposed to the specific implementation. This can be determined during the prototyping phase, and modified throughout the practice and tweaking phase. The 1114 robots always undergo significant changes during the final two weeks.

I hope this helps.

1. In 2006, when we were testing our robot in week 5, we realized that our hopper had major issues with ball jams. We played around with it for a few days until we finally determined we needed a new subsystem, an agitator, to clear jams. The agitator worked like a charm, and was a major part of our regional success. At our regionals, we helped many teams design and build their own agitators. These teams discovered their ball jam issues during these regionals, because of a lack of practice and tweaking time. As a result, these jams drastically decreased their scoring ability. Just an example of how valuable tweaking time can be.

[Kyle]

Check out MOE's MOEmentum website. It has a time line for each week during build and even covers pre-season and post season.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

This is all great advice. I know we "try" to follow similar schedules

One thing that has not yet been mentioned is research. FIRST is not a new competition, over the last 13 years thousands of robots have been built. Teams have learned from each other and developed new systems for completing tasks (picking up balls, lifting things, moving around...).

One of the best things you can do after kick-off is go back and look at photos and videos of past competitions and learn from the success and failures of others. If you find a concept you really like, figure out how to make it better.

CD media and the FIRST Mechanism Library are great places to start.

[AndyB]

Originally Posted by Kyle

Check out MOE's MOEmentum website. It has a time line for each week during build and even covers pre-season and post season.

Why didn't I think of that. MOEmentum is one of the best rookie resources hands down.

By the way, here is a really good Powerpoint that Andy Baker put together a few years back for a workshop I believe.

http://first.wpi.edu/2006CON_Design_Process_Baker.ppt

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Tim Baird

We typically follow this:

week 1: brainstorm and mockup
week 2: finish brainstorming and mockups
week 3: finalize designs and start building
week 4: build
week 5: build
week 6: finish building, tweak, test, tweak, break, fix, ship.

week 7: check to see if the pets are still alive, ask significant others to take us back, do 6 weeks worth of make-up homework, and ask my boss for another extension.

This schedule is very accurate it just needs panic, fear, acceptance and prayer for divine intervention in week 6.

[Blue_Mist]

Yes, 766's schedule is quite similar; now add in long design sessions (four hours doesn't sound like a lot, but ideas aren't like cans and bottles- there's a limit to recycling dumped ideas), a half CADed robot on Solidworks and the occasional magical smoke, along with a potentiometer mounted backwards blamed on the programmers until someone actually looks at the hardware. Discovered at about 10pm the night before Ship Date. Of all the laws of physics and/or reality, Murphy's seems to be the most often followed. And then, as sleep deprivation rockets higher, common sense begins to be even more commonly needed than possessed than usual... And here's something I wrote a while ago:

Fourth Week Fantasy

From red to green the electronics' lights blink
Six rugged wheels and their chains smoothly clink
Victor fans whir to life
Perfect auton ends all strife
What an unattainable dream, we all think.

Unfortunately, this has never happened in the last two years that I've been here, not even at regionals. Oh well, that's what daydreams are for.

[NOV8R]

1583 Timeline. Build season – 6 weeks
We must stay on schedule
Week 1
– Brainstorming – Days 1-4
– Design Freeze – Day 5
– Established robot design
– Mobility system frozen
– General ideas for all mechanisms
– Mechanism Prototyping – Days 5-8
– Build Drive System – Days 5-14
Week 2
– Mechanism Build – Days 8-21
– Programmers Begin Coding – Day 8
– Robot Controls – Days 8-14
– Drive System Complete – Day 14
. Having the robot moving early is crucial!!
Week 3
– Begin Autonomous Testing – Day 15
Week 4– Mechanism Integration – Days 22-28
Wiring is not a quick job.
Weeks 5&6– Robot Done – Day 29
– Testing & Perfecting – Days 29-40
– Driver Training – Days 29-40
. “Practiced drivers make bad robots win, and unpracticed
drivers make good robots lose”
The Last Few Days
– Decorations
– Parts Inventory
– Photographs
– Packing The Crate

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

We're going for something of an accelerated schedule this year.

Kick Off Weekend: Strategy selected, drive train finished
End of Week 1: Design finished
End of Week 4: Finished Robot
End of Week 6: Long, well-deserved rest.

We'll see how it goes.

That's how we roll also.

Originally Posted by NOV8R

“Practiced drivers make bad robots win, and unpracticed
drivers make good robots lose”

Since we started pushing our robots to be done by the 5th week, our performance and ability has greatly been improved. Even a simple robot that the students are familiar with and it's abilities is so much better than a complicated, poorly operated robot.

[Jaime65]

Week one – brainstorm & create design
Week two – finish design & get matterials
Week three – build
Week four – build/test/redesign (if needed)
Week five – build/test/redesign (if needed)
Week six – build/program & ship