_14 Robot Testing

The 95% Rule.

95% is pretty good right? its a solid A , its missing only 1 question ot of 20. If you got 95s in all 7 of your classes you and your parents would love it. in robotics and engineering 95% is not good enough, not by a long shot.

lets say your robot has 7 sub systems (like your 7 classes on your report card), and every sub system works 95% of the time. you did 20 tests of each of your sub systems and of those it only didn't work 1 time and the 6 other sub team leaders did the same. not bad right?

That robot would fail ~30% of the time, loosing 4 of the 12 matches in a standard district event (before you even got to play a match).

In engineering failure compounds and cascades. A failure in any 1 sub system results in a failure in the full system. therefor you need to test everything as many times as you can to get as close to 100% as you can.

How to Test a Robot

How to retest your robot

Documenting your results

Drawing Conclusions from your tests