pic: REX (Team 4334 - Alberta Tech Alliance)

[rachelholladay]

Every year one of our main mentors (ahem, my mum) says "Why can't be just build a simple robot that just does defense? Or just does the end-game?" We've never done it and really have never had a great answer as to why not. Now I'm not afraid to say that we have fallen victim to over-complication several times, which is probably what leads my mom to ask her question at the beginning of every build season.

The answer might be a little bit of fear and pride. I'll use 2008 as an example to contrast two robots. Robowranglers built a zippy little octagon that won CMP. We (my team) built an overly complicated machine that tried to do to much. I remember sitting in our strategy meetings. Everyone wants to build the bot that can do almost everything. Unfortunately, we all know that almost impossible. It takes some humility to say 'We aren't going to try to do everything because that just won't work'. (I'd like to say that we have learned some of humility throughout the years)

But I think there's also an element of fear. Sure you can build a robot that only plays the end game, but what if competition comes around, the endgame isn't as important as you thought and that strategy blows up in your face? The same would be true for a specialized robot. The Robowranglers 2008 robot worked because it did its job really, really, really well. What if we would have tried to build it and only done a okay good? Not only would we would probably not do as well at competition but we would also feel like limited our own abilities. Building a robot that does one thing well only works if that one thing is done super-duper-well. I think teams struggle from the fear that they can't achieve that. (myself included)