Robots by committee

[Gui Cavalcanti]

This year I've been having some issues with this topic, and I just wanted to get some opinions.

Should a robot be designed by everyone on a team, or a select few? What tests/qualifies "the elite" from everyone else? Is there team bitterness if you have the elite design a robot?

I'm not just talking about engineers designing a robot, I don't want to make this thread into one of those arguments. I'm talking about having a core of people who are acknowledged to be better at design, design the robot, as opposed to every single person on the team having individual input.

I don't know where I stand. On the one hand, there's good old fashioned democracy, everyone has a say. However, if everyone on the team has a different skill level, this can quickly boil down to a haphazard, patched together robot. Then there's the core designing a solid, together robot while other people watch. Argh...