Skip to main content

Phase 2: Prototyping

Introduction​

Prototyping is where your robot design moves from concepts on paper to real, working mechanisms. This is the critical phase of robot development - it's where you discover what actually works, what needs improvement, and what ideas should be abandoned.

Prototyping is NOT:

  • Building the final robot
  • Creating polished, pretty mechanisms
  • Spending weeks on perfection
  • Getting everything right on the first try

Prototyping IS:

  • Building quick, rough mechanisms to test ideas
  • Learning what works and what doesn't - FAST
  • Iterating rapidly based on real-world testing
  • Making data-driven decisions about your robot design
tip

The goal of prototyping is to learn quickly and fail fast. It's better to discover a mechanism doesn't work during prototyping than after you've built it on your competition robot!

What is Prototyping?​

Prototyping is the process of building simplified versions of mechanisms to test their functionality, performance, and reliability. A prototype doesn't need to be beautiful or competition-ready - it just needs to answer specific questions about whether a design approach will work.

Good prototypes:

  • Are built quickly (hours to a few days, not weeks)
  • Test a specific concept or mechanism
  • Can be modified and tested repeatedly
  • Generate measurable data
  • Are cheap and use available materials

Think of prototypes as experiments - you're testing hypotheses about how mechanisms will perform. Some experiments succeed, others fail, but all experiments teach you something valuable.