Week One - Robot Design

This first week of build season has gone by very fast. After meeting for six days starting the Monday after kickoff, we have our chassis design finalized. (I can't saw what it is but it is very space-like.)

Here is a quick breakdown of how what we discussed and decided this week:

MONDAY

All team members worked on defining what we wanted our 2010 robot to do.

We came up with two lists; scoring options and strategics options. After compiling the list, we took the scoring options list and discussed methods to score

TUESDAY

I'll use pictures to illustrate this second day of design:

WEDNESDAY

This meeting was split up into three parts; chassis, control mechanism, and scoring mechanism.

"Chassis" was led by the head of mechanical. After asking the team if they had any new robot frame ideas, two were offered in addition to the "space" chassis. One was a triangle, and the other, a eight wheeled monster. Our team then went on to list pros and cons of each and, in the end, the "space" chassis prevailed.

For the second section, control mechanism, the team split of into groups to design one based off of the decisions that were made the previous day. All the groups designed different version of the same mechanism. The vacuum won.

In the last part of the assembly, scoring mechanism, the team broke down onto groups again. and two design emerged from the fire of pros and cons. A kicker/puncher hybrid and a pure puncher.

THURSDAY

Taking where we left off the previous day, the discussion leader (Justin, team president) asked if there were any more designs for the scoring mechanism. The room was quiet. Finally reaching a consensus about the robot, the team split off into their own subteams to discuss their build season goals.

SATURDAY

Saturday meetings are the longest of the week being nine hours long. This particular meeting the team broke off into departments to work on their individual projects. During the course of the

day you could hear interjections from all the subteams, often mixing and covering the discussions of others. Ideas were being thrown around like, well, moon rocks. Some of them made their goal, while others fell short. Take for instance the octopus idea offered by a member of the mechanical crew. This idea basically was finding an octopus in our area and using it to capture soccer balls for our team during a match. Entertaining to think about, but not practical in the least.

Besides coming up with strange ways of scoring, the entire team made great progress. By the time we had to leave, the trailer we met at smelled like pizza and we were ready to be finshed with robotics.

Until Monday anyways.