You must go backwards to move forward

At the beginning of our process to invent an AI device to monitor restoration projects in the Everglades, Dr. Buncher told us that we are going to face many obstacles along the way to our final invention, and that we should welcome and learn from these setbacks. We did not believe him, after all, this was Dr. Buncher, he taught us everything we know about robotics and engineering for three years. How could he get stuck? In the beginning, everything was going smoothly. However, our first major obstacle came in January after we tried programming our prototype Raspberry Pi. It was not saving anything we coded. So, we had to start from scratch three times until by accident our IT security teacher just happened to walk in our room, and we told him our opportunity. We never use the word “problem” we substitute the word “opportunity” whenever we are about to use the word “problem.” He immediately went to work reconfiguring the hardware of the Raspberry Pi and suggested we install a different Operating system: Linux. Guess what? He was right. We did exactly what he told us, and our software went in perfectly.

We are back from the winter recess, and we understand that sometimes we have to go backwards in order to move forward. This is an important lesson in the invention process. We also learned that an invention requires some very specialized people who can help at certain times along the way. There are always things that come up that we do not expect along the way.

We have our AI monitoring prototype device coded and we are now testing it with different sounds to see how effective our coding is, see picture. We are also working on our presentation for our mid-year review. We made our PowerPoint for the presentation, and we are ready to display our prototype(s) to our guests. We are also brainstorming on devices that could be our final free-standing device that could easily monitor the restoration projects in the Everglades. We just completed the application for a provisional patent for our device.

We realize that this InvenTeams project is more than the invention itself. It is about the process and how to overcome obstacles along the way both with both eyes on the target the whole time. We bonded on the airboat ride we took last month. We remain positive that we will have a working prototype and working device soon. We see that all these little things play important roles in succeeding with our invention and that we should welcome setbacks along the way-- just like Dr. Buncher told us in October.