The Roles of a Mentor - A contest

[Alan Anderson]

As lead programming mentor, one of my responsibilities is to make the robot break itself autonomously. Then I get to sit back and relax with a can of Dr Pepper while other team members 1) fix what broke, and 2) make it better so I have to work that much harder to break it the next time.

(I first succeeded at this task about ten minutes before the open house on the weekend before ship date the first year I was with the team. Something I did -- I think it was along the lines of touching a joystick -- stripped a bunch of teeth from a heavy steel worm gear, and the robot slammed its arm into its drivebase at high speed. The mechanical team figured out a quick fix, determined that the quick fix could be repeated once more if necessary before having to replace the gear, and worked out a reasonable plan for replacing the gear later.)