Hi, i started a rookie team at my highschool this year with the help of team 25 and students and teachers from my school. I have been following FIRST for 7 years, my dad is a teacher for team 25. It is hard to explane my ideas to the rest of the team and alot of wild and unreal ideas are comeing from them. They have never built or drove a robot so i dont blame them. But when trying to form strategy’s and designs comes along it is hard to chose one because alot of the ideas are not from a good point of view. I would like someone to tell them there ideas wouldnt work or something but its hard from them to understand some key facts like: 130 is not alot of weight (they think it is), 100 gizmos makes it hard to do everything, and that we do not have the engineering or the time to build things to control the whole field. HOW DO I STOP THESE IDEAS OR MODIFY THEM FOR REAL USE?!?!
The robot will meet or exceed the 130 pound limit no matter what design you use or how hard you try to keep it light. I would say just go with the simplest design as my team learned that the hard way last year. The most important thing is that you get the robot done on time and functioning properly.
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) I know you have heard it many many times, but in my opinion it’s the truth.
Ask them what they want the bot to do.
- Give them a list of different things it WILL do ie. follow white line
How do they want to accomplish the task.
- Pick up box ie. side clamp, “hands”, conveyer…
Always ask them to explain how and why advantages and disadvantages.
- “hands” that would open with a scissor motion to grap 1 box at a time because it will make the build process easier for us and will help on weight. the disadvantage is that you can only do 1 box at a time.
Also build a box that is the size of the max dimensions. This will show them just how small the bot will be and usefull when it comes to checking your final size.
hope this helps.
thank you jay
that makes sense let them c it to understand it and lay out good and bad we sorta do but we dont look at all the points
Our team once heard the phrase “the less moving parts, the less can go wrong.”
I think that is the perfect motto to go by.
Furthermore rookie teams from the past who thought they were not going to have much success because of being “rookies”, have triumphed over teams that had tons of money and engineers.
Simplicity is always the key and make sure to stress to you team that you only have 6 weeks.
Holly
Mentor for 168
Try to keep in mind that, as you said, rookies have never built a robot before and they are going to have some wild and crazy ideas! But they should not be discouraged. Rookies are the fresh set of eyes, ears and ideas on every team! They will think of things that have never crossed the minds of your 3 year veterans. Instead of telling them, “That’s stupid. It can’t be done,” Try explaining why it can’t be done. Help them improve on their design. Implement some of your ideas in their design. Compromise, work together. Make sure everyone knows the rules of the game, before you start designing your robot! And, as Jay said, keep it simple! It is better to do one thing extremely well, all of the time, than to do everything ‘OK’ some of the time!
- Katie
Make sure everyone on the team knows the advantages/disadvantages of having what they have brainstormed. Also keep in mind that even though having an all-powerful robot would be nice, it is not practical because it is easily broken and something will go wrong with it if the team isn’t 100% careful.
we get all the ideas, (this year we even had flying) and then reanalyze them in a group and say the pro and cons of them. This narrows it down pretty quick while still getting alot of ideas, and the people still get the sence of helping. ya never know, you could get an off the wall idea that works great for the game.