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#16
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Re: Build Timeline
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. Last edited by Karthik : 02-01-2008 at 02:14. |
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#18
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Re: Build Timeline
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. |
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#19
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Re: Build Timeline
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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 Last edited by AndyB : 02-01-2008 at 04:52. |
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#20
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Re: Build Timeline
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#21
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Re: Build Timeline
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. |
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#22
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Re: Build Timeline
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 |
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#23
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Re: Build Timeline
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#24
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Re: Build Timeline
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 |
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