The main requirements for this project were outlined at the very beginning of the year.  You can find them here.  To help us along with the project certain things were alos available to us, one was a Handy Board that could be used to control the robot's actions and the other was an RF communication transmitter/receiver so our robot could talk to the computer and vice versa.  Beyond these guidelines, we could design the robot however we wanted.

In addition to these requirements, we decided our robot should also meet the following specifications:
 

We felt that if we could meet these specifications, we would have a good chance of winning.  The speed was needed for both offense and defense.  This is because a fast robot could defend the goal easier when on defense, and have more opportunities to score when on offense.  It seemed like 1 m/s was a good top speed to aim for.  We also wanted to make sure our robot would have enough power to last the entire competition.  Even though it wouldn't be used the entire time, we figured that if it could run continuously for about 50 minutes, it should have plenty of power available for the actual competition.  Even though rough play is not allowed, we understood that something could easily go wrong either during testing or the competition and we didn't want our robot falling apart if something did happen.  For this reason we wanted our robot to be solidly build.  Finally, we didn't think our robot would be too effective if it couldn't control the ball.  Since we couldn't trap the ball during maneuvers, we still felt it should be able to turn up to about 45^o without losing it.

With these specifications in mind, we were then ready to start designing our robot.

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