Each member of the team contributed his or her original designs for the drivetrain, chassis, antenna turning mechanism, and the core manipulating mechanism. The team formulated criteria to evaluate each design. All viewpoints were discussed and categorized for the decision making process. For each aspect of the robot, the team established a reference design for comparison. The team reevaluated after the results of the decision making process to establish the strongest feasible strategy.
The developed designs were compiled, criteria was established, and decision matrices, located below, were used to determine the best possible designs.
The first table lists all of the mechanisms of the robot that the team agreed were the most important. The other mechanisms of the robot, including the lever toggling mechanism, button pressing mechanism, and starting light mechanism were considered to be quite simple and could be built easily with few modifications and were not included in the decision matrices. The main mechanisms listed in the table include drivetrain, chassis, antenna mechanism, and core mechanism. There are five design options for each mechanism except for the chassis which has eight.
The second table is the first decision matrix and it lists all of the success criteria for each mechanism from the first table. The reference design for each mechanism was considered to be an average design, and for that reason, the reference design for each success criteria is listed as a zero. If any of the other designs were considered to be better than the reference design, a + sign was listed there and a +1 score was added to the total design. If any of the designs were considered to be worse than the reference design, they were listed as a – sign and a -1 score was added to the total design. Lastly, if the design was equal to the reference design then it was listed as zero and no score was added to the total score of the design.
