Machine Control Capstone Project

Achievements:

• Sort one marble (x1)
• Sort two marbles (x1)
• Sort three marbles (x1)
• Sort four marbles (x1)
• Sort four marbles (x2)
• Sort five marbles (x1)
• Sort five marbles (x2)
• Sort five marbles (x3)
• Use one piston
• Use pneumatics but less than three pistons
• Use one motor

Building the Project:

Finished project:

Glider Challenge: Deliverables

1) An image of your completed glider design.

Final Project

2) Your Glider Challenge: Design Phase notes.  

1) What's the challenge?

   The challenge is to create a glider out of tissue paper, wooden dowels, and glue. The goal is to have to glider stay in the air the most amount of time and travel the longest distance of anyone else's glider.

2) Brainstorm solutions:We have a couple important ideas that we want to add to our plane.

-large wings

-curved wings

-a rounded body (like the bottom of a boat)

-rear tail wings

-a balance plane

3) Specify:

-Some of the criteria that we need to meet is out plane must be able to withstand a two story drop so they can be flown again. They also have to be able to glide obviously so they don't just free fall to the earth.

-Our main constraint is that we are limited in our materials. We have only three products we can use, those being tissue paper, glue, and wooden dowels. Also we have only about five 3' long dowels to use which is going to make up the whole body of our glider.

4) Develop Solutions:

Sketch of idea

3) Your Glider Challenge: Test Phase notes.

    a) What did you learn from your test flight? 

   b) What are your goals for your glider and how did you adjust your design in order to help it better meet them?  

-The goals for our glider is for it to be balanced so it does not do continuous back flips but rather glides while staying right side up. How we adjusted this is by moving the rear horizontal tail wings and moving them to the front and extending them off of the nose so it is balanced both front to back, and side to side.

4) How did your glider perform? What would you change if we competed again?                                                                                                                 

-Our glider unfortunately suffered a crash right before our flight and the front wings broke off. We had to quickly add weight to the front so it was balanced without the front wings. So when we threw our glider it was not very balanced and flipped up side down and flew like that until it crashed. We did win both the distance and the hang time competitions with our glider. If I could change anything for the flight I would reinforce the front so it would not break on flight day.

Egg Drop Challenge - Iteration #1

Total # of Achievements Earned:  25

Brainstorming: We chose the 1st possible solution.

1st Possible Solution

2nd Possible Solution

3rd Possible Solution

Decision Matrix: The one with the lowest number wins.

(lower numbers are better, each design idea is ranked 1 through 3 on each design aspect)

Material Prep:

I will bring in about 8 feet of aluminum foil. I have written in my agenda to make sure I will not forget.

Picture of our final project before drop:

Picture of our egg after drop:

Arithmetic:

115.9g (weight of the egg and contraption) - 67g (weight of the egg) = 48.9g (weight of the contraption)

Algebra:

Vf ^2 = Vi ^2 + 2ad

Vf = ?

Vi = 0 m/s

a = -9.8 m/s^2

d = 4.37 m

Vf ^2 = Vi ^2 + 2ad

Vf ^2 = 0 + 2(-9.8)(4.37)

Vf ^2 = Vi ^2 + 2ad

Vf  = 9.255 m/s

Geometry:

a^2 + b^2 = c^2

a = 4.37 m

b = 0.5 m

4.37^2 + 0.5^2 = *square root*(19.3469)

c = 4.40 m

The marks that our project attained:

Brainstorming: +4

Material Prep: +2

Material Size: +4

Material Weight: +6
Drop Accuracy: +3
Egg Resilience: +3
Calculation Achievements: +3

Engineering Program Investigation

The college I chose to investigate was Arizona State University Barrett.

Why does this institution appeal to you?:
   -It appeals to me because my brother actually goes there and I visited with him and the campus is amazing. Also I have heard what my brother has to say about it and he really likes it. Also the living space is very nice and the Barrett campus is very safe.

Which engineering program is most interesting to you and why?:
   -The engineering program that is most interesting to me is the electrical engineering program because I would love to one day work with a big company like Apple or something similar.

Which undergraduate engineering elective is most interesting? Describe the course and its appeal to you:
   -

My chosen TED Video

TED: Technology Entertainment Design

1) What is the TED orginization about?

---TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Now it has evolved to a much broader horizon. 

2) What is the purpose of their website and how does the functionality of their site support that?
---TEDTalks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at TED with the world. Under the moniker "ideas worth spreading," talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. Indeed, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website has been reengineered around TEDTalks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world's most inspiring voices.

3) As Engineers and Problem Solvers, which topic areas (the choices from the "Show talks related to:" section on the sidebar) are of most interest to us? Justify your answer.---I think that they can all be related to engineering in one way or another. But I think that the most relative would have to be technology, design, and global issues.
   -Technology: I think that technology is relative because all technology needs to be engineered and there are steps and routes to take that an engineer must accomplish to produce or create technology. I be
   -Design: I believe that design is related to engineering because when one is designing anything they have to engineer there product and take steps like an engineer to accomplish their design.
   -Global Issues: Some global issues are extremely relative to engineering. Many things like getting clean water to transporting goods to places affected by natural disasters. There are endless ways engineering can contribute to solving global issues.

4) Based on your previous answer, what are 3 talks (videos) on the site that appear like they would be of most interest to you as an Engineer/Problem Solver? Justify your choices.
   -Cynthia Breazeal: The rise of personal robots: This video interests me as an engineer because it talks about placing more technology in our lives and the design of those robots.
   -Nathan Myhrvold: Could this laser zap malaria?:  This video interests me as an engineer because it includes global issues such as malaria and technology that will help get rid of it.
   -Jeff Han demos his breakthrough touchscreen: This video interests me as an engineer because it includes technology and design and a whole new way to look at computers.

5) Create a bulletized outline of the key issues presented in the talk.
   -A lot of people think that if they could go back in time they would be a genius compared to anyone else.
   -They think they would be able to create very smart inventions but really we underestimate what we would need from other people.
   -Thomas addresses the idea that if he could go back in time would he be able to create a simple machine like a toaster.
   -Thomas then goes around the world collecting all the parts he would need and he realizes how difficult it would be to create a simple toaster and how stores make like so easy.

6) How could you get involved in the field/technology/issue you chose to hear about? What experience/skills/training/education would you need to learn to get involved with this field?
   -Anyone could do this. This is not necessarily a field but anyone can try to create a simple machine out of scratch. You might need some prior electrical skills in order to accomplish something like this.

Minecraft Challenge

Unfortunatly the internet connection went down before we even had the option to start the challenge. I did however make an attempt at the challenge anyways. The first challenge was to build a 10 block tall pyramid. I started but the 10 or so minutes I had to complete it went by fast. So the picture above shows what I was able to complete including the time I had to clear out a place to build it. When I moved onto the next challenge which was to build the eifel tower I know that there was no hope in me completing it if I had to do everything I just did over again. So I tried to use my incompleted pyramid and transform it into the eifel tower. Again though I ran out of time. And the picture below shows how far I was able to get.

Subprograms

In this activity we used the subprogram option in RoboPRO.

---a Subprogram allows us to have a program to control our fischertechnik product on multiple pages rather than having everything on one page. This makes our main page much more simple and organized. This also allows us to work on each part individually and have the final product bring all the subprograms together to make a simple main program.