InvenTeam Covid-19 Update
Communications Lead
Before the COVID-19 situation, I was working on writing thank you notes to all who have donated for EurekaFest. We were also previously planning on selling shirts made out of plastic pollution in collaboration with Oshki clothing to raise money for this as well. The team was very close to reaching our goal for EurekaFest before this all occurred as well. It is a shame, but it's important that all of the teams and the Lemelson-MIT staff stay safe throughout this whole situation so although we are not able to go to Washington DC, the team plans on trying to make the most out of this situation.
Engineering Lead
I welded the motor mounts together and welded them to the chassis, luckily everything fits perfectly and the chain and sprockets line up, everything so far is going great, I connected the whole drive line up and put the wheels on too, but we did run out of key stock so we need about 2 more feet of it but I’ll probably get that later. It runs and drives by connecting the batteries straight to the motors, I think we are doing good next thing is the motor driver setup. The bucket group has also been working on the bucket in the midst of this too. It's been difficult since they cannot collaborate, but one of the members has taken the bucket home. We now have an opening and closing mechanism ready to be mounted to the bucket.
Financial Lead
Due to Covid-19 the shipping on our purchases has taken a lot longer. I have ordered stainless steel rods, and have continued to record our purchases including our amazon prime membership account. We also had to work out a situation with the rods because they were missing the first time, so we had to order it again. They will be delivered to the member of the engineering team who is working on the bucket portion of our device.
Administrative Lead
Instead of the report at the end of the year, the team is opting to work towards getting a patent. Since before the Mid-Grant Review, the team has been in contact with Trent English, a patent attorney that gave the 2016 Williamston High School InvenTeam a patent. Trent English also came by our mid-grant review and was very interested in our device. Faith has been in contact with Trent English and we are scheduled to have a Zoom meeting soon to discuss the possibility of getting a patent.
Programming Lead
I set up the Xavier and transferred all of the files from the Raspberry Pi over to it. I installed all of the Python libraries that I need and I've started to modify the detection code slightly so that it can make use of the Xaviers GPU. Once I get a motor driver for the drivetrain I'm going to start working on the code to get that running.
Sustainability Lead
This month has certainly been an eventful time with everything going on in the country. In March, I remember just like yesterday the day we found out it was our last day of high school. I had heard from some reliable people I had good reason to believe we wouldn't be coming back that Friday for our last day of school for the week. I was fortunately incorrect about that assumption but Jack Schafer and I took the precaution of packing up a lot of the essential supplies for our device on that Thursday just in case. We were able to finish packing everything up on the Friday which our no school order went into effect after. I was very pleased that we had gotten a lot of the important stuff Thursday so we didn't have to worry as much Friday about packing. I have not been able to see any of those things since we loaded them up onto the cart sadly, which is something I never really expected or even thought about. I hope to see them again and look forward to finishing our invention.
Research Lead
Before the quarantine situation hit, I was trying to get research approval from the IRB to give out feedback surveys at EurekaFest, however with EurkeaFest being online it seems as if we might not need these anymore.
