Team 191 Lessons Learned 

This year during the robot coding, one of our team members would write a good deal of code for the iRobot Create in one evening without any help from anybody else.  The result was that when the rest of the team attempted to debug the robot one evening when this team member wasn’t there, we didn’t understand what the robot was supposed to do and had much difficulty getting it to work correctly. We could have avoided these problems if this group member had commented his code properly and told the rest of the team what the robot was supposed to do. Through this experience, our team has learned the importance of working together for effective communication skills.

 

We have also learned many important lessons from the documentation process. For example, we have learned that it is more effective to complete projects a little bit at a time, instead of completing it all at the last minute. The documentation process has forced us to complete certain parts within several deadlines, forcing us to work on documentation steadily instead of finishing it all at once. There have also been several times when we have been unable to accomplish our objectives for the meeting because we did not start working immediately when we arrived. From this experience, we have also learned to work continuously within each meeting session, instead of doing all the work at the end of each meeting. 

 

We have encountered numerous surprises throughout our Botball experience. However, the new technology and the board design surprised us the most. In previous years, we have used Gameboy Advances, so we were a little bit unsure of how to use the CBCs. The boards have also been flat in past years, so we were also unsure about how to deal with raised boards. However, we dealt with our surprise and inexperience by trying different things and doing more testing. Eventually, we became proficient at using the CBC and the raised surfaces ceased to be a problem because of our extensive testing. 

 

We have made many mistakes and not completed tasks as effectively as we could have. However, we have also learned valuable lessons from our mistakes. We would advise future teams to start working on their robots and documentation as soon as possible in order to reduce stress and to create more effective, higher scoring robots. We would also advise future teams to devise a plan and to stick with the plan, since it is very difficult to make last minute changes. Finally, we would advise future teams to work together and to make sure everyone is aware of the team’s objectives and goals. Team members should tell the rest of the team when there are problems or when something is not working correctly. Every team will make mistakes, but they will also learn from their mistakes. We will accomplish more in future years if we apply the lessons we have learned from past years.