Spring Hill December Update
This month, we have checked off a few items from the list of things we need to accomplish before the process of creating the C Bot is done, but we have run into a few bumps in the road. We have had to redesign our track system to a spherical robot, we have encountered programming issues with licensing agreements, we have grouped our team into three bodies, and have presented our robot ideas to the Hope Lion’s Club.
We were a bit hesitant on the design of the C Bot in the beginning. We started out with a robot system with tracks that would be coded to make rotations around the chicken house by this said code, however, we realized that the tracks might not be a good idea. One reason, is that tracks are good in not getting stuck and such, but when placed on chicken house floors, a spherical shape is more efficient. A spherical robot can glide over small objects and cannot overturn when bumped against anything. Second, a sphere cannot teem any objects that the robot may come across in a chicken house, like feeders and water lines.
We have placed each person on our team into one of three groups, the design team, the communications team, and the coding team. Grouping each member is such groups is going to help with how things are run in the team and pantomimes a business. The groups names give away what their main jobs are. The Design team is creating designs and ordering parts for the C Bot. The Communications team is making business card and brochures and organizes meetings and events. The Coding team is learning how to use different coding bases for the C Bot and is building the “brain” for the robot.
On January 9th, four of our team went to speak to the Hope Lions Club. They asked many questions as to the design and our purpose. They had some blithe and interesting suggestions and we took them into consideration. The lunch they provided for the members of the Lions Club and our team members was delicious.
At the end of 2016, the program that we had been using to code the C Bot, expired. That means that we have to find a new program, and carry over all of our coding to the new one and it is going to be quite tricky. Finding a new program is challenging, because there is so many to choose from, and in any format you could ever imagine. We are still in the process of trying to decide on which program we will use, but we have narrowed it down to two or three.
All in all, we are steadily completing requirements from our catalog of a checklist, and we have accomplished some key tasks this month, but we are far from done. We are working as hard as we can, but we will need to work a bit harder if we are going to get done with the C Bot by June. We still have a ways to go before completion and each member understands that.
