The team worked on their missions and are getting comfortable with the robot and software. Mrs. Naughton and Patrick were out of town, so Sam paired up with Paul to work on harvesting corn and mining Uranium and Danny worked with Alex on a container for power-plant fuel. Paul and Sam use the same implement as Danny, so they decided to continue his mission without returning to base, saving time.
Joey and Andrew continued to make progress on getting oil from the oil-rig. Mr. Emge got an answer on whether or not they could lose contact with their container during the mission and the answer was "yes". Joey also brought in an RCX mock-up of a front-steer robot to show the group, but it was too fragile so he decided to put that off. Michael is now doing the solar sattelite before getting the truck, so he started working on the combined missions.
Nate had a design worked out for installing the solar panel, but found out that it violated the rules by attaching it to his implement. He worked on other ideas that do not require attachment.
At the end of the meeting, Mr. Emge introduced the "KISS" design principle: "Keep It Simple, Supernova" - make the design as simple as you can while still getting the job done. Time was almost out, so we'll continue that next time.
We also discussed the mission order and the team agreed to Sam and Paul's recommendation that Wind Turbines and Tree Planting should be combined with Corn Harvest and Uranium Mining, with the new combined missions being performed second. Joey suggested that steps 4 and 5 be swapped so that while the Solar Panel and Wave Turbine are being deployed, they can fill the fuel container for the Power Plant mission. The team agreed and the new order is published at the right.
Next meeting is Sunday, 10/21 from 3:00-4:30.
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