Pieter and Ian FLL part 1
- 1. Project Overview HSR - Mechanical Aspects Pieter Gagnon Ian Danielson
- 2. Description Our project is to address the various challenges that InSciTe has put out. Although we will not participate in the competition, we are still building the robots for the experience. Our primary focus is the mechanical aspects of the solution.
- 3. Project Goals Our ultimate goal for this project is to assemble as many different mechanical solutions for the various challenges we have been given. We will then document what we created, for future reference.
- 4. Problem definition Every year HSR puts out a set of challenges. Anyone can form a team and build a robot to solve these challenges. They then have the option of participating in a competition, with potential awards and scholarships. The primary benefit is first-hand experience with programming, and mechanical design.
- 5. History of the problem There have been almost a decade of annual challenges prior to this year’s. Extensive documentation of previous challenges can be found at http://www.hightechkids.org/ There are a variety of teams that participate in this, and each year new types of solutions are created.
- 6. Related projects Both of us have participated in the actual competition in past years. We are taking advantage of this year to experiment with different design ideas, that we didn’t have the time to follow up on in previous years.
- 7. Three Possible Solutions Design Challenge Reuse Previous design Create New Design Copy Someone Else’s Design
- 8. Previous Design One option for completing the mechanical aspect of the challenge is to re-use old designs. This would be beneficial, because we would know what works and what doesn’t. This might be bad if we miss an opportunity for improvement.
- 9. Create new design The second option for completing the mechanical aspect of the challenge is to come up with a completely new design This could be good, because there are things we might want to try that we haven’t included in past year’s designs This could be bad because it might take a while to get out of the mechanical design stage, while we work to refine the structure of the basic robot.
- 10. Copy Other’s Past Designs The final potential solution to our problem was to build off of someone else’s previous design. This would be potentially good because there have been some very well-built robots in the past, and we have records and the capabilities to duplicate them. This would be bad because it would be more of an exercise, and nothing else. Copying someone else’s design isn’t exploring anything new, and since we aren’t actually competing, there is little point.
- 11. Planning and scheduling Week 1 - Set up workstation, gather materials, familiarize ourselves with the challenges. Week 2 - Begin brainstorming for possible approaches to challenges. Week 3 - Begin building basic robot, using parameters set in previous discussions. Week 4 - Build attachments for specific challenge approaches. As the end of the quarter approaches, discuss the future of the project. Continue to refine designs, or move on to a new project?