25-Aug-2015: In Class

Purpose:
The purpose was to accept a given problem and solve it using the outlined technique from the notes.

Problem 1:
For the first problem we were told to group into teams of 3-4. Each team member was assigned a title of either robot, controller, or analyzer. The robot was blindfolded and the controller was to yell directions, from a fixed location, to get the robot to reach the final location while going around other robots as well as obstacles like chairs, desks, and walls. Off to the side the analyzer(s) sat quietly and took notes in errors.

As an analyzer some of my notes included:

• "Robot hit rear wall"
• "Robot hit other player"
• "Robot hit rear wall, again"
• "Robot hit multiple chairs"

As you can tell there was obviously issues in completing the course. Here are some improvements my team and I came up with afterwards based on the notes we took.

For this first problem we really had to think on our feet and just commit to the challenge without first planning a strategy. We did not know why we were being blindfolded until we were led to the door and then we did not know the route to the finish line. Luckily with some quick thinking from my controller we were able to establish a clear connection using commands in Spanish.

Problem 2:
Our new task once again involved a team collaboration, we had to safely land an egg from about 12 meters up using only 20 straws, a sheet of paper, and simple scotch tape. This time we were given a problem right off the bat. There were given measurements and assumptions that could be made.

We first started by stating the problem. Then we wrote down our knowns(inputs) and our unknowns(outputs). Once this was done we could start looking for ways to solve for our unknown variables and of course assumptions had to be made. We began with a free body diagram. Then continued on to find our impact time. We figured our best bet was to maximize the flight time. Here was our build.

It looked like it work the best but sadly our poor little egg cracked its guts all over the inside of that baggie.

Summary:
We created a problem statement, described the given information and figured out what need to be calculated, worked out the problem by hand, and then tested it.