Tanks

Group:Evan
           Gregor (team leader)
           Emma (parts collector)

1.Our team lost this challenge. Our tank was very un-tank-like and was not able to take a hit. The way the battery pack was supported wasn't that great and I personally think we had an excessive amount of gears and it didn't seem to help the overall performance. Our big problem was the securing of the wheels, gears and the battery pack.

2. We were all extroverts so we made sure that our ideas got heard, that's for sure. Even with that though we seemed to get along really well and had a very good work atmosphere. Gregor was the main builder because of his previous experience with Lego but also because he just picked up the materials and started doing stuff. Evan was also building. I was the one that asked questions because I didn't understand the plan of the robot. That lead us to conversations like this, "Oh yeah we have a great gear system. Emma what did you say about supporting the battery pack? Oh I forgot all about that. Let's figure it out now." All in all we worked great as a team until the testing part. Gregor did the most driving and sometimes didn't let Evan and I test it out.

3. Our team did best at allotting time for testing and emergency modifications. We finished building twenty minutes before the end time so had a solid 15 minutes to test. It was great because we all got to have fun driving without the pressure of competing. Our robot did really really well at first but then things went downhill from there. The gears started breaking off, the connection to the battery pack weakened... it was a mess but thankfully we had 5 minutes to fix things.

4. Next time I think we should spend more time on the brainstorming and putting together ideas part. We did share ideas but then we didn't really put them all together at the beginning. People just started building and worried about the rest of the design later. The questions I asked during the building time were good but should have come up in our brainstorming session. I think that thinking about Anti-winning would have really helped because our robot wasn't like a tank. We should have focused on stability and strength rather than speed. Tanks don't usually go fast but they are really strong. Ours was the exact opposite, very fragile and quick. I would have changed the design so that it had a way to defend itself against opponents.