Oops i forgot to publish. Anyway, (writing on thursday), I’ve had some time to look at this from a larger perspective. (edit: this has turned into a lot, I’ll separate it into its own post.)
We don’t seem to be lagging behind previous years. I wouldn’t say that we’re ahead, either. Roughly the same pace. We are slightly lagging behind the schedule that I set, though, and if a few items (shooter prototype :eyes:) keep stalling, it’ll hurt a lot. Ri3D does a finished robot in 3 days. We can’t even shoot a ball in 3 days.
The team as a whole appears to be doing… not that bad i guess?. At least, a good portion of the stuff that I tell them to do, gets done. We’re a bit low on experienced members, though.
It is quite noticable that we are missing designers with good design sense (only AG has some sense and still LXM and MK (both graduated) were better; and we had both of them). And if it looks like this for designing prototypes, I really don’t see our sophomore designers designing entire subsystems. Right now for stuff to be done correctly I need to sit right next to them and make sure it’s done right. I’m basically a design team member (minus CAD) at this point. And overall design productivity feels lower compared to past years.
With regard to prototyping we really don’t have a process or a scaffold to prototype things fast. Our prototypes are now going to the plasma cutter (and we ran out of sheet !!) (oh and they are obsessed with plasma cutting stuff). There’s nobody with the mentality of doing stuff fast and efficiently. Like mentor S was talking about making flange bearings, which is a good idea, but nobody is doing it. I would do a lot of this myself but (1) I have lot of other stuff to do and/or (2) I don’t have the skill to do it.
My brother LYT is right. We might be cooked. And the real reason is that our designers aren’t strong enough to handle the complexity. At least, I have a backup plan so we can bail out if stuff isn’t done by week 3 or 4. LYT has a rough cad for it too. Although tbh I’m hoping on the off chance that our current design works. but LYT is definitely right.
As (de facto-ish) captain I have too much to do. And I don’t have a great understanding of design / mechanical stuff, which does hurt a bit especially when they keep asking me questions or to check something. I could (and sometimes do) tell them to go by their own feel but it looks like they need better feel. And I don’t have time to code stuff myself.
Sometimes I think about what will happen next year. AG and I will have left, along with MI and AP. The remainder of the team that’s still here doesn’t have that much experience, especially on design and programming side. I can’t envision anyone being captain (or design captain or prog captain). It’ll probably be a mechie but really, that won’t go well. The closest I can see to a captain is LYT because he keeps on insisting on the simplest designs possible. He’s right (even for this year). But that’s quite unlikely rn.
My reflections on robotics series is becoming quite relatable right now, not gonna lie. Build season is like watching a movie, so far. You know what will happen, and there’s not really anything you can do to stop it.
