Design Completion?

[excel2474]

When should a team have there robot design completed and start building? Last year it took us a while. What does your team do?

[Collin Fultz]

We like to start building as soon as we finalize a system. If drive is the first thing done...start there. If your ball levitation scoring device is the first thing designed...start there.

Basically, asap.

[Jon Stratis]

We try to have prototyping/design finished by the end of the first week - in other words, tomorrow

Last year, our robot design incorporated several possible stopping points short of fully finished that would have given us various levels of capability. Because of that, a few people could work on prototyping a little longer on the more complex actions, while everyone else started on the drive train and other parts. This year, we don't really have that buffer, so we're really focusing on getting everything we need to prototyped by the end of the day tomorrow!

Of course, this may vary for teams... But you'll find that the quicker you can do your design and prototyping, the more time you have to actually build the robot, and the more time you'll have to practice driving it around - and that last part is incredibly important this year.

[JesseK]

In one way or another, most of the build team has worked every day since kickoff. Thank God we have tonight off

Right now we have everything conceptualized in CAD, with spacial representations of what we believe will be the final manipulator. We are further testing various subcomponents of the manipulator (a conveyor belt, hopper, and turretted shooter system) and should have a CAD ready for it by the end of next week. Building of production-quality subcomponents probably will not start until then, but we're acquiring the necessary parts now.

The drive train CAD is fully completed, the parts are ordered, and the frame construction has begun. With as much time as we've put in already, the drive train would already be done except we didn't decide to do a new (to us) type of drive train until kickoff day. So we instead put the new wheels on our '08 prototype bot ("tank" drive) and the driver is getting practice in slippery conditions.

[Brandon_L]

Were trying to wrap up design tomorrow but unfortunately our main mentor/teacher was taken out in an ambulance and is still in the hospital, were not so sure of that anymore.....