WHO "DISIGNS" YOUR ROBOT?

[DaBruteForceGuy]

Who disigns your team's robot? Now i don't mean the actual concept, but the engineering of the materials, tolerances, drawings, tolerances, weight distribution, gear ratios...

Is the engineering and problem solving aspect done by actual engineers or by students (high school)?

[Matt Attallah]

Students say what we want it to do. Engineers give us a choice, and they go about it the best way, showing us how/why they chose and selected it...

[Digo]

I think there was a huge thread about it in the General Forum.
you may find a lot of answers there

[Manoel]

Actually, I think he's asking something different.

[DaBruteForceGuy]

NO, it is just because our team was completely lost without our ourderful mentors and teachers. First of all because we were rookies and second because other than me only one or two other students even knew what mechanical engineering was!
Even my skills on AUTOCAD are sketchy (to say the least), so i was wondering if students really do do the drawings, calculations blah blah blah...

[Andrew Rudolph]

Us students decided what we want the robot to do. Then as we go along we design various components and present them to our teacher who then decides the final designs that go on the robot. We design alot of the things in AutoCad and Rhino and also machine parts using Mastercam or building styrofoam full scale mockups



Andrew

[geo]

Our robot was buildt by 19 high school students, we only had one engineer who give us idea and we design and build. We worked very hard because it's our first year in the First Robotics Competition and we were lucky that we won the Canadain Regional.

www.warp7.ca Team 865

[Noah]

I'll have you know that our robot was designed and built by our team of about 12 high school and middle school students and our 2 high school teacher mentors with NO help from engineers, and this year, our rookie year, we seeded 12 and were picked as an alliance partner for the finals in the LA regional event! Our robot wasn't particularly complicated (Quite the opposite, in fact) but it worked, and pretty well at that! Also, every one of our students knew how EVERYTHING on that robot worked! I have not yet found another team that can boast this fact! GO VENICE GONDOLIERS!

[Rob Colatutto]

on my team we had maybe 2 engineers really come by...and they basically said "you look like your doing good" and left. our robot is completely student designed. me and about 6 other students built that entire robot top to bottom, transmitions, claws, electronics board, wheels, everything. we did all the physics on our own and picked out own gear ratios. designing the robot is really the greatest experiance i have ever had, and any of the other real members of a team who do the work will agree with me. its very satisfying to see your robot go out there and move very well and push three robots and two goals down the feild on its own : ) in case no one knows my teams robot, its the really small black one that grabs two goals dubbed the "evil microwave" by many teams, we were in curie division at nationals

[Rob Colatutto]

oh, should have read the post before mine first. i can tell you what anything on our robot does, and so can about 5 other people. i would be really nice to have the whole team know what they were looking at though

[Dan 550]

We have a meeting early on and we argue for a bit and there's teacher, student, and engineer involvement but mostly it's a group of three of us guys that wind up designing and redesigning it repeatedly and a girl that tells us whether or not we'll have the time for this or that...

[Aaron Lussier]

Becasue 151 has so many people on the team It is kinda hard to get concepts into peoples heads but our team splits in to three groups: red, white, and blue. Each team has a bunch of students and at least two engineers. The mentors are to simply keep us on track if we veer to far off subject or start getting in to stuff like how will we make this bracket. Then all the groups meet and try to sell there design to the other two teams. Some times we try to incorporate parts of other designs into the one we pick.We have a vote and what ever design we decide on, that is the design that that students and engineers start putting into PRO-E
From there if we run low on money students would take it apon them selves to take parts off our sponsors machine shop hands and go to our high school and finish them there, or in the case of our wheels, make all of them at school. Then the student Mech team will put the robot together. WHOA it seems I've gotten off the subject, the people who generate the drawings, figure out the tolerances and gear ratios, are students. the engineers just check to make sure that it is right.

[nwagers]

Careful Noah, Mach - Vee's rookie year was definately a good one. It was a very close knit team with a great understanding. In fact, we came home with national rookie of the year. Our robot is and always has been "student - built". Our mentors are there to tell us what won't work and why. They also show us how to properly use the tools and machines we need to create out bot and try to keep us on track.

[Caleb Osborne]

On our design, we broke ourselves up into subteams. ( drive train, defensive, offensive, etc... ) . The subteams thought of ideas on how to do their job. We put all the ideas together to form our robot. We did change ideas a lot on the way though. That is how "Sprocket" came to life. We had about 3-4 engineers and about 15 high school students building the robot. That is how "Sprocket" came to life.

[Ashley Weed]

Our robot is basically student concept/design/built, with hands on work with the engineers. The engineers perfect the things we want to do, and because we work in a Middle School wood shop, the engineers will make a couple of the parts used at work.

As in some of the previous statements, I think that is somewhat true for a lot of teams. Where several of the students can have a lengthy conversation about the robot and every part of it, while there are students who are unsure of the difference of 2 & 4-wheel drive, and if the robot is powered by drill motors.