Team 241's Turret Prototype ontop of the Harvester Prototype

[boomergeek]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

If standing around with their hands in their pockets or arms crossed is your definition of seeing mentors working, I hope you start your own company one day & I can get paid to do that very same thing there!!

As the first year mentor with his hand in his pocket, I can attest to huge contribution that students, mentors/teachers, sponsors and parents make to this team. Like most teams, the technical skill of our students and our mentors varies greatly. I'm learning from students in some areas and providing consultation in others. I'm very pleasantly surprised how much this robotics team reminds me of an extremely young professional engineering team: very chaotic with lots of informal training and brainstorming sessions to solve the inevitable problems that creep in. Actually, I was surprised that getting the robot built is really a minority of the problems needed to be worked out. This is about 40 person team (with close to 35 being students) finding their niche to make a contribution with the primary goal of inspiring students to solve problems for themselves. We have about 6-8 sub-teams and project management run by students.
Do mentors/teachers consult and have influence ?
Sure:
1) Nurturing parental and sponsor relationships
2) Teaching students technology and engineering: encourage:
a) safety, safety, safety
b) thinking about making it simpler, stronger, lighter and more reliable-
c) finishing it sooner, rather than later: a finished imperfect but workable alpha solution in the can, makes working on a potential beta a lot less stressful.
d) Use of math and physics
e) looking it up in reference material (including Chief Delphi!)
f) learning from failures as well as successes
g) not leaving a mess!

(For some reason, some teenage students sometimes don't think about these things)

BTW, I'm a telecommunications engineer by profession and I've never been part of a robotics team before.

Check out our web site at www.team241.org.