Engineering Design Learnings from Lockdown
In the wee hours of Sunday morning, we found out what the next VEX Robotics Competition and VEX IQ Challenge will be. This is always a very exciting time of the year, and with the extra announcements of a new VEX AI competition and tools that further our technical skills and exploration, many of us can't wait to get our hands on the gear and start playing.
With NZ entering Level 3 restrictions shortly, we wanted to share some thoughts on how might teams want to navigate their start to the season in the current environment. This long-form article will be helpful to our VRC level students, and mentors/coaches of VIQC teams.
Meeting under lockdown
Just because we can’t physically meet, doesn’t mean everything has to come to a stop! Keep in touch and discuss your approach to the game using online platforms (Zoom, Skype, Discord, Teams, House Party, Hangouts etc. for a few ideas), just like how many businesses are doing for their work.
Take minutes/notes of your meetings to help you keep track of everything discussed and add them to your engineering notebooks. If you are waiting for your Welcome Pack to arrive with a book, write it down on refill for now so that you can paste it in there when they arrive.
With meetings, find approaches that work best for your group; some may find with the awkwardness of video conferencing (or difficulty of keeping to schedule and on topic!) that it might help to have a “chairperson" for the meeting to maintain the flow of conversation and avoid talking over each other. Take turns being the chairperson, and set out a list of things you want to get through.
It's worth mentioning that our new site www.kiwibots.co.nz has a forum space, designed for the Kiwibots community to connect with each other. Students can reach out to the volunteers and wider Kiwibots community with all their questions and points for discussion, and we can respond directly back. Accounts are free and the forum is a safe space for all ages with a NZ focus. NZ educators will also be granted access to a Educators forum in there where teachers and mentors can connect with each other to ask questions and discuss topics relevant to them.
Engineering notebooks/design process
Most often, teams take a rather haphazard approach to the design process at the beginning of the year, where we see building often taking place before the strategising and design.
One of the advantages of the temporary Level 4 restriction environment is that it slammed the brakes on access to hands-on building, and instead created an opportunity to focus more on the strategy and design process. Following an engineering design process can highlight or open your eyes to all sorts of different approaches to the game, and in some cases save a bit of money on parts not being used prematurely (as the saying goes, measure twice, cut once).
So, while team’s are unable to start building immediately, it’s a good idea to take this opportunity to have some great discussions about how your team will tackle the game.
Without going too far into depth, some strategy focused questions to consider might be:
- What are the key rules that shape the gameplay?
- What are the most efficient point-scoring options?
- What math might support different point scoring strategies? (e.g. for Tower Takeover - building stacks vs owning towers; for Turning Point - flags vs caps). This is a good chance to practise all your trigonometry and other geometry skills!
- How many objects do you want to carry at once?
- What defence might you expect from an opponent?
Begin forming your strategy as a team, and remember that part of engineering design is not getting it perfect first time! You may have to explore a few options, each time taking the failings of a feature as a learning point to improve your design.
Once a strategic route has been agreed upon, you can begin exploring some design focused questions. This is a space that is helpful to use lists of pros/cons, or scoring metrics like decision matrices that will help you rank objectively. Ideas for design questions include:
- What are the different options for manipulating game objects?
- What are the different options for lifting/placing game objects?
- What are the different options for moving around, and what aspects are more important? Speed? Traction? Size?
- Are there any special considerations when bringing the different design aspects of your robot together?
- Are there any other special features that might be helpful?
- Are there any robot designs from previous seasons that might help with inspiration?
- Is there inspiration from nature or other mechanisms you use in your daily life that could inspire your design?
Keeping Notes
For your engineering notebooks, make sure you record good notes from your meetings and collect all your sketches and calculations to paste in.
Handwritten notebooks are preferred and score higher on the design award rubric. Mention how you’ve adapted as a result of COVID-19 and the lockdown, and showcase any technologies you’ve used to help you.
Computer Aided Design (CAD)
Now is also a great time to learn and get familiar with CAD software. Autodesk (a sponsor of the international competition) provide their complete professional software suite free of charge to students. Most commonly used for VEX is Autodesk Inventor. Files for each part are available from the VEX product pages, or alternatively part libraries with fancy properties assigned have been put together by the community and are available on the VEX Forums. By using CAD, you learn a very real skill that’s used all the time across the engineering industry, while also figuring out how your robot might fit together (not to mention you get some excellent looking pictures for your engineering notebooks!).
https://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/inventor-professional
Wrapping up:
Just because we’re facing unusual times doesn’t mean team activities necessarily need to stop. Now is a great opportunity to rethink how teams use an engineering design process to back up their creations, and explore all sorts of new technologies to support their decisions and find better solutions.