1. Coaches Survival Guide
Presenter notes in blue.
2011 BEST National Conference
Prepared by: David Kwast of Cowtown BEST

2. This is presentation draws on what has worked for me as a garage-based team that met primarily on evenings and weekends. What works for your team will vary (even from year to year). A good resource to look at is the Coaches Survival Guide posted on the bestInc.org web site.
Purpose
The focus of this presentation is about increasing the odds that you will have a successful team.
What is Success?
Winning?
Learning?
Participation?
The Key to Being Successful is having a Plan
The overarching challenge to the BEST competition is time
What is your philosophy? You want the students to have a positive experience.

3. Season Walkthrough Must Do Tasks
Outline
Season Walkthrough
Must Do Tasks

4. Do everything possible that can be done prior to the Kickoff Event.
Season Walkthrough
Pre-Kickoff
review the engineering process
review past competitions and designs
line up help (parents/mentors/alumni)
shop training and safety
establish meeting time availability
plan a preliminary meeting schedule
Do everything possible that can be done prior to the Kickoff Event.

5. Teaching Season Walkthrough
Try to do as much instruction as possible before the season kicks off
This a goal to shoot for. It is unlikely that you will be so prepared that teaching isn’t required during the season.
Teaching
During the season the students should just be executing

6. Post Kickoff Meeting (same day)
Season Walkthrough
Post Kickoff Meeting (same day)
handout copies of the game specific rules
discuss game and possible strategies
define what the robot should do
must haves
good to haves
Make sure that everyone understands the problems to be solved and the issues to be considered. Solutions are not entertained at this time.

7. An okay idea done well is much better than a great idea done poorly.

8. Season Walkthrough Brainstorming Evaluation Multi-voting
adult led will go faster
record everything
Evaluation
does everyone understand the idea
is the idea feasible
discuss pros and cons
Multi-voting
cull the herd to a few good ideas
Decision Matrix
make sure that something related to ease of fabrication gets proper weighting here
Often bits and pieces from old ideas get used later on.
Combine/sort/group as desired.

9. Season Walkthrough Form Build teams
consider students’ technical skills
consider students’ leadership abilities
Build Mockups or Partial Assemblies
proof of concept
cardboard is your friend
fabrication refinement
maybe it can be made out of cardboard
Typically three main build teams. Base, arm and effectors.
The building of mockups often helps the students discover simpler ways to build things.

10. Season Walkthrough Build the Robot
use standard designs as appropriate
wheel mounts, servo mounts, couplings
make students explain and draw what they are going to build before allowing them to proceed
encourage simple design (ask questions)
completing a bad component design may be the best path forward
allows overall team progress
be directive when appropriate
don’t allow student/s to remain stuck
ask questions
present options
Refining standard designs is a good off-season activity.
The students still must make the decision of what they are going to do.

11. Season Walkthrough Practice modify an old robot for practice
make a list of items to fix (or improve) and rank them
any refinements to the robot should be planned such that they do not affect practicing
practice everything

12. Season Walkthrough Competition have a checklist if necessary
replacement modules/parts (within kit limitations)
specific person assigned to charge the batteries
scout the other teams
What is their game strategy? Will it alter your strategy? Note good machine design items.

13. Must Do Items Get the Actual Game Pieces
This is the only way to verify the behavior between the game pieces and the robot
Build a Portion of the Game Field
Essential for practicing
Small details of the field can prove to be very significant
Have a Complete Functioning Robot by Mall Day
A full week to practice and find/correct problems is invaluable

14. Coach’s Personal Milestones for the Team
Week 1 – Design Selected
Week 3 – Have a Drivable Base (if it has wheels …)
Week 5 – Fully Functioning and Complete Robot
These are the milestones that I try to have my teams achieve. I imagine teams that are proficient at building could spend more time in the design phase.

15. Design Tips
Assume robot-to-robot contact if you share the same field area
Encourage failsafe design features (belt and suspenders)
Avoid a design that stalls out a motor
Use standard designs when possible
wheel hubs
couplings
motor mounts
servo mounts

16. Backup Slides (hyperlinked to the main presentation)

17. Schedule Example
Example of actual hours of meetings/building for the 2007 GPA team (this team had very little experience building, this also does not include the BEST Award hours).
1 of 2

18. From BEST Inc. web site (78 to 124 hours).
Schedule Example
From BEST Inc. web site (78 to 124 hours).
2 of 2

19. Decision Matrix Example
1 of 2

20. Decision Matrix Example
From the Coach’s Survival Guide on the BEST Inc. web site.
2 of 2

21. Here is a complicated design that was not properly tested
Here is a complicated design that was not properly tested. All of these clips were thrown away (plus a bunch more).
My advice about giving advice. Give the students plenty of advice (primarily by asking questions), but do not require them to following it. The students should have ownership over their ideas and decisions. Their successes need to be their successes, and their failures need to be their failures.
1 of 3

22. Here is the final clip design (much simpler),
2 of 3

23. Evolution of an arm from mockup to final design.

24. A basket that was way to complicated to fabricate.

25. This arm design was completed even though we knew we could not use it on the final machine (rotating arm).
1 of 2

26. The arm design used for the Hub competition (crane style arm).
2 of 2

27. We did not practice placing the robot on the end of this strut, two students had problems doing this during the competition.

28. Game pieces (specific knob and specific can).
1 of 2

29. More game pieces. The practice bottle (left) and the game bottle (center) behaved differently with our robot.
2 of 2

30. Practice field.
1 of 5

31. These screws affected our performance (which we didn’t discover until Mall Day because we didn’t think they were necessary for our practice field).
2 of 5

32. Practice field.
3 of 5

33. Practice field.
4 of 5

34. Practice field.
5 of 5