Before we started making design decisions, we figured we should nale down our major design criteria.  We came up with five:  keep it simple, make it fast, give it good ball control, make it sturdy, and keep it cheap.

Right from the beginning saw the wisdom in trying to follow the K.I.S.S. rule:  Keep It Simple Stupid.  We quickly saw how easily it could be to put in too much complexity.  To help eliviate these problems we decided to start out as simple as we could and then add complexity if we had the time or need.

We explained why we choose to try to make our robot fast in the Requirements and Specifications section.  As for designing, this meant we wanted to keep the weight down.  This fact seemed to compliment our K.I.S.S. policy as well.

Our reasons for wanting good ball control is also explained in the Requirements and Specifications section.  This criteria mostly comes into play when choosing the types of materials and the the physical shape of the robot.

The concern over sturdyness is also discussed in the Requirements and Specifications section.  This deals mostly with the construction materials and how they're fastened together.  We wanted to make sure whatever we used to construct the robot would be able to resist breaking when hit and that whatever we used to fasten parts together could also withstand any collisions.

Finally we din't want to go broke over this project.  We're all students with few monetary resources and we all wanted to keep it a cheep as we could without compromising our other criteria.

With these criteria in place, we only needed to do one more thing before we could jump in and start designing; we had to look at what kind of knowledge and understanding that every aspect of this project required and then fill in any gaps that there might be.

Requirements and Specifications
Design Criteria
Body-Of-Knowledge
Evaluating Alternatives
Selected Design
Schedule
Building and Programming
The Competition
Conclusion
Meet the Team
Images
Links