After our long day of brainstorming on saturday, the design team definitely had our work cut out for us. Strategy and functionality of the final robot for our team is decided communally, so the main functions of the robot are largely dictated during the afternoon following kickoff. We have an enormous meeting of student members, mentors, and some previous team members (who were on break from college) and throw around ideas. After the discussions are over, the design team (namely, the fabrication managers and I) have a list of functions to build into the robot, and we get to work figuring out how we will accomplish them.

The design team is under significant pressure from all other departments to finish their work and deliver specifications and numbers to other departments so that they can begin work. Control systems has been particularly pushy this year, perhaps as a result of last year when they could not build the control board until the third week of the season.

On sunday we were able to decide the general 'look' of the robot, and what large systems would go where. This year we will again build the majority of our components into a pancake near the floor to keep the center of gravity of the robot as low as possible.

Every day this week I have spent about 3 hours after school in the lab working on prototypes, mock-ups and deciding what size hardware to order and how different linkages and drives will work. Our mentors are busying themselves working on a mock overpass, giving advice when asked, and sitting on their hands so that they remain in compliance with our 'hands - off' rules. Our mentors are not allowed to touch the robot (or it's parts) except to help move it, and are not allowed to touch the software laptops except to move the scroll bar while reading code. This rule ensures that the robot and code are entirely products of student work, a source of pride for team members.

Tomorrow I hope to work on prototypes for some other systems we have not finished yet, and on saturday we hope to be where we were last year - driving a chassis around the lab.

This year the first week feels like we're way behind schedule even though we're ahead of where we were last year (mechanisms and manipulators didn't start until mid-week-2) it feels like we're going a lot slower. For me I think this illusion is partly due to the fact that this is my 2nd year and I know what to expect, where-as last year was my first year and everything felt like time was flying by. Another difference this year is that our team grew enormously compared to last year, we have more people working on fabrication, to the point where we don't really have enough for them all to do. The combination of these two factors have made this week feel like I've gotten nothing done, but in fact we're well ahead of where we were last year, - I hope we keep it that way.