Rover Project Post III: A Party Theme

What party?

Project announcement: We would like to combine party and meeting into...parties!!

HA. HA. HA.

I like company culture like PepsiCo.: Work just for the fun of it! Yet realistically, we are such an international group and we need time to get to know one another. Anyways, I don't care how it looks, we are doing good and will be better. I love the fact that I put "making friends" in a higher order than "have the last best project ever".

We had a briefing today and it's time for a theme to be decided. A theme is a function that will be stressed the most, a direction that would formulates our strategy, and a place to be allocated the most resources. It's basically about risk management. Identify the most important part and minimize the risk for it, take the risk that's affordable. 

There are several options:

Locomotion:     Go straight, turn, be kept from falling off the arena, breakout strategy

Navigation:      Search for the ball

Retriever:       Retrieve the ball

Flexibility:       Be repaired or transformed easily on the spot during the competition

Maybe I can play the "Make a Sentence" game and hopefully find the theme out?

If XXX fails, the failing part would most likely be ..., it will result in...

1. Theme Locomotion

Even if navigation fails, we can still get lucky and swallow some balls and the game continues! So navigation is out.

If the locomotion fails, the failing part would most likely sensor hardware/programming/breakout strategy, be the rover going out from the arena or stuck at the edge, then nothing ever happens! 

2. Theme Retriever 

If the retriever process fails, most likely it would be 

• the mechanism makes the ball stuck in the rover-- game over
• the sensors detect wrongly and waste the time and energy -- Efficiency down but survive
• motor can fail but the chances are rare -- game over 

3. Theme Flexibility 

If one sensor fails, and the whole task depend on it, it will be over...

We need some sun shine! 

Also we need more external information feed, Prof. H is no. 1 helpful however, we don't even have a no.2! We will need to allocate two hours to watch 2 past year videos to learn from seniors!

Nevertheless, I found this other course I am taking called MP4003 "strategic analysis of product development" play the role of a bell man to me. For example, in the New Product Development chapter, the flexibility of product is one important aspect. It benefits enormously for the company. Ring a bell...