10/4 Meeting Minutes

We had one of our more productive meetings today. Breaking into pairs worked very well and we are beginning to see some real progress on the robot table. We took a break from the research project today but will pick up again this coming week.

Patrick's revised "Mission Tracker" is now the top link on this page. The team is continuing to evaluate this order and it will likely change again as they find more efficient ways to solve the puzzle.

Danny and Sam made some great progress on planting trees and installing wind turbines. They made a prototype of an implement, shown to the left, that is proving to be useful for other missions as well. They both spent a good amount of time testing their implement, "thinking like a robot". Paul helped with mounting to the robot and they began programming.

Joey showed some great initiative bringing a Lego building book to illustrate an idea he had about using rack and pinion instead of differential steering, as our current robots are built. The team has to figure out if this is the direction they'd like to go since it's a big change from what they have done so far. Joey did a great job getting his ideas across.

Patrick and Paul worked on design of a corn and uranium harvesting machine. Patrick was also thinking like a robot to test their ideas while Paul helped Danny and Sam. In their end-of-meeting summary they suggested changing the order so that they can dump the coal and push the truck out in the same mission. They are also considering abandoning their first design and trying Sam and Danny's implement.

Joey and Andrew worked together to bring oil barrels from the oil-rig to base. This is a challenging and critical mission since any oil in the water subtracts a lot of points. They are up for the challenge and tested Nate's oil catcher. They discussed improving Andrew's robot since the wheels have a lot of camber (angled).

Nate worked on ideas for the wave turbine and solar panel. He's planning to use the light sensor to navigate and requested to the team that one be designed into the robot and it was agreed to do this. He also plans to use a moving arm to lift the panel. Nate has a challenging pair of missions but he has great ideas and will be successful.

Alex worked on ideas for the power plant energy supply. He's still kicking around ideas but is also considering using Sam and Danny's implement. He was able to resist jumping straight to building to consider the options.

Halfway through the meeting, Mr. Emge spent 10 minutes on "Engineering Secrets". This week it was the secret to design - thinking it through before jumping to a solution saves a lot of time and testing helps to improve the ideas. Also, don't lose your programming work accidentally by saving your new work over the stuff you just got working. He showed the team a couple of complex circuit boards to show that you can accomplish some predictable results if you spend the time to do some planning on your ideas.

Mr. Emge will be out of town for the next 2 meetings.