The decision to undertake this challenge was made approximately ten months prior to the competition. With a relatively short period of time to organize a team and design, build, and test a vehicle from scratch, the principle philosophy was risk reduction. Subsystems were designed to be simple and robust. The use of proven technology and off-the-shelf components was encouraged. Performance was not stressed as a goal.
Furthermore, the project timeline assumed that at least one team would successfully complete the contest this year. Therefore, to achieve the goal of demonstrating a competitive entry, the vehicle would be required to complete the contest this year. Alternatively, we had considered a two year plan for developing a vehicle with a higher probability of success.
The team did not have sufficient resources (time, financial, or human) to evaluate alternative system architectures or subsystem designs by testing prototype models. Instead, design alternatives were considered based on simple calculations and experience. Therefore, the most important criterion for a design was having a high probability of success. Flexibility was designed into each subsystem so that it could be made to work.