pic: Team 148 - Robowranglers 2010 - Armadillo

[Dmentor]

Originally Posted by thefro526

I noticed that Team 148 (and presumably 217) do substantial amount of prototyping before they even start to design robots. This is where we've failed every year. We look at the game a design a machine from day one and we always are trying to finish as early as possible. I never thought to slow things down and prototype and research and just play around with some concepts. Maybe next year we'll have to take this new approach.

Team 148 has clearly spent a lot of time tailoring and streamlining their engineering process which enables them to spend more time in the early design steps. My occupational experience (and research in defect analysis) tells me that dedicating more time up front provides the biggest return on their labor investment. In order to generate this time, they have become extremely efficient in modeling, production, integration, and to some extent testing.

The beauty of teams like 148 is that they tell you exactly how they achieve their success (see JVN's engineering design whitepaper, full CAD models of 2008/2009 robots, and the "How it is Made" video among other resources they have produced). I think the trouble many teams have (mine included) is that the engineering process is applied ad hoc and even if following a proven process there is no analysis of the process itself for where to eliminate waste and optimize the implementation of each step. For example, if it takes to long to integrate subcomponents try modeling more. If it takes to long to model, train more students in the off season and become really proficient. I think without an efficient engineering process, the only hope teams have of being reliably competitive is to (1) out work the competition (probably not practical and it is a hard way to go even if it was) or (2) out think the competition (unreliable). Team 148 is demonstrating what engineering should be all about and is showing that it works!