How involved are your mentors?

[Jon Stratis]

We're in our fourth year, and every year it's been different. Part of that is the impact returning members can have on a team - when you have returning members that already know how to build a robot, they can work a lot more autonomously than a student who doesn't know what a wrench is. But most of it, i think, is the evolution of the mentors understanding of how to work with the team.

In our first year, no one knew what we were getting into (yeah, i know... that's everyone's story). As a result, the robot ended up being mostly mentor designed and, since our only equipment were easy to use hand tools, built with a good combination of student and mentor input.

In our second and third years, we tried to get the students more into the design process, which was good, but unfortunately we started to move away from too much student work - a lot of items were prepared by the machine shop at work, and later welded together by mentors. The students did get to do a lot of prototyping and design work, however.

This year, i think we hit the best balance we've ever had, and it came from (mostly) a 50/50 approach. After the initial big-group design meeting, students divided up between the subsystems (drive train, kicker, and lifter), and we had one dedicated mentor to each. They all then worked together in developing ideas, prototyping, and building. One of the best parts about this robot, in the mentors opinion, is the complete and total lack of welding. Everything on the competition robot was constructed from stock materials at the workspace with student involvement. The only off-site machining we did was for some custom made mecanum wheels, which really would have been impossible to machine at the workspace.

IMO, the best a team can do is blur the line between mentors and students, and work together side by side to build the robot.