Blog Post 5

Give a brief summary of your final device/design and explain what features you've designed to address the needs of your problem

The rover was equipped with a gopro style camera attached to a gimbal to make sure there is a study video feed to emergency personnel. It has the capability to view footage in real time from a device such as a computer, smartphone, or tablet. Additionally, the rover’s design and placement of the motors allows for the rover to rotate in place, eliminating the need for area to do a u-turn. This benefits emergency personnel as it allows for information to be received in small, tight spaces that would not be otherwise visible to them. Furthermore, a telescoping bumper was placed onto the front of the rover so that the rover could endure light impact without leading to fracture. This allows the operator to have space for mistakes, increases overall durability, and adds weight to the front increasing rover traction.

Provide 2-3 key Validation results that indicate how close you have come to meeting your project goals. Are these results acceptable to you? How do you think you could do better?

A key validation result for us came from the sustained speed test where we had an average speed of 2.63 m/s. This is considerably faster than the competitors we found that most closely resembled the tasks our rover would be asked to complete during an emergency. Another key validation result was the passing of the hurdle test for the 10 cm hurdle for all 4 materials as shown in Table 1. In preliminary testing, the rover was not doing well in this test due to many issues including weak shafts. After strengthing the shafts as well as gaining a better understanding of the test, the team was able to pass the hurdle test for each of the 4 materials for the goal height of a 10 cm hurdle.

Table 1: Hurdle Testing Results

Provide 3-4 representative images to illustrate your device and your results. Focus on the "final product," not the process.

Figure 1: Completed CCESR

Figure 2: The Rover next to the Hurdle Test (10 cm Hurdle)

Figure 3: Bumper Structure for Bumper that passed Crash Testing (Bumper: 75% Infill)

Discuss whether you feel your final device succeeded in providing a solution to your proposed problem. Are there issues with the device or the problem statement itself?

We do feel that the final device was successful in some areas; however, there are certain areas of the rover that could be improved upon. The main part of the device that improving upon would yield the largest impact would be buying the wheels rather than printing them. This is because the wheels we used on our rover were not the best at getting traction. If we had bought wheels, we could have gotten a lot more traction.

Discuss 2-3 major lessons/take-aways you have gained from the year-long capstone course. How has the experience helped you to grow as an engineer?

There have been many learning experiences throughout this project - everything from technical lessons to teamwork lessons which have helped us grow as engineers. One major lesson we have had from this experience is the importance of always keeping everyone on the same page. There were times throughout this project that we weren’t able to meet up as a complete team to work on the project. The team member that wasn't able to make the meeting usually fell behind on what was currently going on with the project. We started making a huge effort to always communicate as a team. We did this by providing notes and pictures from the meetings when the whole team wasn’t able to meet so that the team member that couldn’t make it to the meeting could quickly get up to speed and continue to be a productive member of the team. Another take-away is that on a design project like the one we have been on things are continually changing in terms of the design. We had to learn to embrace the change and be focused on finding solutions to reach our overall objective and not allow our desires to make a particular proposed solution work and embrace the constant change and fluctuation of the design.