Realistically facing the challanges of elevating your robot

[Jon Stratis]

I can tell you... we have a mechanism that will work. We can deliver the hooks to the bar in under a second, and from there lift ourselves up quite quickly (we won't know how quickly until the robot is finished, but the mechanism was able to easily lift a mentor).

It's extremely easy to be overwhelmed your first year. Focus on the basics, and make sure you get a robot that works. Hanging from the bar is nice, and many teams will be able to do it, but there will be plenty of room on winning alliances for teams that can't. The defensive position, for example, may end up being way to important for that robot to spend the last 20-45 seconds of the match running back to try an hang - the other team may be able to score 2+ points in that time frame.

If you look at matches from two years ago, you'll see that, of the 3-robot alliances, only 2 could really play with the ball each match. What's the point of having a third robot that can play with the ball, if instead you could have one that couldn't, but could run laps faster than everyone else? Every game FIRST comes out with has multiple angles like that. The trick is finding the angle your team can accomplish, and be the bast at doing that one specific thing.