Research And Development

Completing thorough research is a necessary part of the engineering design process. Unfortunately, students often begin building robots too early before researching their design. Of course, we all want to get our hands on the parts and jump into the building process. But patience with research will pay off in the end. Below are some tips to use while researching. 

Document Your Research

Be sure to write down titles of videos or names of websites with URLs in your engineering notebooks to keep track of the research you have done. You will likely need to return to a video or website later, so do not waste time looking for it again! Write it down.

Use YouTube

Many experienced teams begin building their robots in the spring and posting video reveals in the summer months. As the season continues, more and more robots can be found on YouTube. 

Some things to look for in robot reveal videos:

• Did the robot score points or drive around?

• Did the robot contain all three subsystems, or is it just one of the subsystems?

• How where the subsystems integrated?

• Where are the motors located?

• What type of chassis, lift, or object manipulator designs were used?

• What type of gear ratios were used?

• Does this video show all angles of the robot? Will it be useful when building?

These are some of the questions you want to consider when looking at a robot design found in a YouTube video. Often, students will take screenshots or play the video over and over to use the robot in the video as a model to copy and innovate. 

Some search terms that may be useful include:

• the name of the game

• reveal

• robot

• team numbers (specific teams post videos every year)

• VEX

Below is a fun video from Team 8059 that shows many angles of a four-bar lift on a U-shaped chassis with a friction grabber object manipulator. It also includes an elevator lift as the mobile goal intake system. In addition, they show many details about their design that would be helpful in building a similar robot.