If you could do this game over

[JulieB]

If could do this game over this year what would u do different?
To change the performance of ur robot?
And action of ur team members?

[JakeGallagher]

If I could redo this season, I know that I would try to put more time into helping my team in teh build season. I worked on the 3dsmax presenatation, and I was devoted to it, but in the end we had almost nothing becasue of a hardware failure. I think that if I worked on the Max presentation as a secondary project I would have learned more about the Mech aspect of FIRST, which is why I joined the team in the first place.

[Andy A.]

Perhaps this is in the wrong area?

Perhaps there are other threads about this subject?

Or perhaps I am just confused and missing something.

-Andy A.

[Billfred]

1) I wouldn't have crashed the robot when test-driving it.
2) I would've stood up for myself more.
3) I wouldn't have let the robot tackle me on the last build night.
4) I'd have said that this arm would never hold onto a 2X ball.

But hindsight's 20/20, right?

[henryBsick]

Robot designs-
Hang from floor
goal grabber
thats it...

Helped more in build
decide between the things I do around robot time
And most of all try to have taught some more newbs. I got a few this year, but the more the better. .

[abeD]

If i could do it over i would have set aside more time for doing schoolwork.

[Yan Wang]

I can't change this year but next year I will work harder to convince everyone from the start that smaller points (ie. 5pt balls, herding, capping) is more important than the large points (ie. hanging), which I failed at this year. But hey, it stilled turned out well

[JoeXIII'007]

I would love a smaller, faster, lighter robot that could go up the small stairs and
hang faster than our current one. The bot would also have a scoop at the front for easy ball moving, and (I don't know if this is legal) a stick to keep the ball release from activating for more time to get a mobile goal underneath for quick points or to prevent the opponets balls from releasing. =)

Crazy idea: a snake bot that would crawl up the 10 foot bar and the coil at the top.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Well, I would probably start the program for the bot a little before the bus ride to new jersey

[sanddrag]

#25 chain for drive, plastic roller chain and sprockets instead of rubber timing belt and pulleys for lifting arm, bigger reduction on lifting arm, omni wheels, rollers for pushing balls.

[aaronbr28040]

I would have spent more time on mechanisms, made the frame lighter to begin with. Would have made sure that all of the connecting links for the chain werent hitting on anything when I replaced them. Learned more about CAD, loosened up some, and had even more fun.
-Aaron
But none of this matters......unless we apply it to next year. One of our mentors came up with the idea of having everyone write down anything that we learned, solutions to any problems we had, and tips for building the robot. This way we have hard copy and everything that is learned one year is not lost the next as we are only a two year school.

[Max Lobovsky]

I think i have a pretty unique comment: i would have pushed to use our robots other capabilities more. If we hadn't just tried to hang for every single match in both of our regionals, we could have really had better results by using our herding and capping abilities. Though we were pretty consistent at hanging by our second regional, i think we could have been bringing in a lot more than 50 pts a round if we had too some more risks and not gone for those easy 50.

[Arefin Bari]

if i had another chance for FIRST FRENZY... i would concentrate on building a robot to do a specific job other than being a all rounder...

[Solace]

a slower high gear

closed loop steering control.

NO FISCHER PRICE MOTORS IN THE DRIVE TRAIN. useless things. torquey, but they burn out like crazy!

a more effective 2x claw
now that I've seen 45's claw, i would have done it like that. if not that, i would have at least made it power both ways. as it is, it is powered closed and then spring returns to open.

when we go to deliver the small balls, we usually always miss at least one. if we had had more time, i would have tried to eliminate the bouncing in the balls when they are fired out of the ball hopper.

we would not have wasted all those countless man-hours making a winch for hanging. it did not fit in with our strategy, and plagued us constantly until it was finally removed.

other than those, i am happy with our robot this year. it had a few flaws, but most were solved at new Jersey (yay 42nd seed out of 47) in time for UTC (2nd seed and regional champion alliance captain). Quite a turnaround if i may say so myself.

[MikeDubreuil]

We always finish the morning we have to ship. Next year I will try to convince the rest of the team as to why it's so important to leave a week for drive practice and programming. And also, do everything my computer engineering self can do to get the mechanicals to finish quicker.

This year we finished the robot at 3am on the day of ship. There was 0 drive time and about 30 minutes of programming time.

At our first regional, BAE, we seeded 49/52. At Annapolis we seeded 7/58. We also never realized our winch didn't have the power to lift up the robot until the last seeding round at our second regional, Annapolis.

It's painfuly obvious that we needed practice time. It's financialy stupid and quite embarassing to use your first regional as practice, and that's exactly what we did this year.