Solar car- progress report number 1!

As you can recall from my past blog posts, it's time to construct our own final project. I chose to construct a solar powered car, using two solar panels, a switch, and connectors. I've finished finding the criteria, objectives, and constraints. However; Mr. Carpenter hasn't given it back yet with the corrections so I'm not sure if what I speculated was right.

I believe the objective is to harness the energy of the sun through solar panels, enabling the car to move. Criteria are things that can be measured and they show the quality of the design. Below is a list of criteria I created for the solar powered car.
-Cost
-Energy
-Weight
-Size 

 

Constraints are things that must be followed. Below is a list of constraints that I found for the solar powered car. 
 -  Must be powered only on solar energy. 
-  Must not use dangerous material. 
 -  Material must not be prepackaged. 
 -  Must be inexpensive. 
 -  Must move freely without interference / be autonomous, after flicking the switch on.
 -  Must be able to move after harnessing energy.

I finished defining the problem, therefore now I have to generate ideas, which is the second step out of eight in the design process. I am currently brainstorming ideas by making a morphological chart and doing research. I'm thinking of the material, wheels, hubs, axles, how the panels, switch, and connectors will connect onto the robot, and the objectives, criteria, and constraints. Thus, I'm moving on slowly through the design process, yet gradually. I should be able to keep up a steady pace if I stay highly motivated. 

Constructing our Robot! (reflection overall)

Overall I felt the entire project of building a robot, which could carry a AA battery to charge each of four electric cars parked in the parking lot to be adequate. It was somewhat fun but also stressful, since the robot would always malfunction when it came to the code. Using scratch was quite difficult and confusing in my opinion. However, overall the entire project as a whole was okay. It wasn't the best project that we've done, however I enjoyed it. Building the robot itself and prototyping the design was simple. Programming the robot and finding its function, while graphing it and recording the data as we timed it for the amount of distance it went was more complexed. However eventually we finished right on time. Unfortunately, our robot malfunctioned while we were testing it in the actual course. It ran straight into the parking lot,  knocking over cars. We received 0 points, meaning we failed to meet the objective of this design. Nevertheless, we gained experience out of this design and found enjoyment in working together. My group consisted of Mykiela, Evelyn, and Christian. They were easy to communicate with and made the entire design process enjoyable. Constructing a design report as a group was difficult since others put in more work than some and it was hard to collaborate. I find it harder to work as a group rather than alone on google docs, since collaborating writing is one of my weaknesses. Making the presentation went smoothly since we already had the design report as a base to help us make the slides. Hopefully, our presentation goes well. Overall this project was moderately pleasant.

Links
Design report- click here
Presentation- click here

Wind turbine vs Robot design

The wind turbine project that we completed previously differed a lot from our current project, building a robot. The wind turbine's objective had been to create electric energy efficiently while using wind power while the robots objective is to carry a AA battery to charge each of four electric cars parked in the parking lot. Both of the projects used hubs, axles, and cardboard. None of the items were allowed to be prepackaged in either project and the materials used had to be safe. I'd say the wind turbine project was a lot simpler than the robot project. The robot was more complexed, since we had to program it and create an elaborate code. Scratch was relatively difficult to use because it was somewhat confusing. The wind turbine project wasn't difficult since the only thing we had to do was create the blade shape and test it out until we finally came to an appropriate wind speed. However, for the robot design we weren't able to fully ensure our robot would function properly in the course. Although we didn't have as many prototypes for the robot design as we had for the wind turbine design, it had to be more precised and took longer. Overall, I believe the robot design had been the most intricate project that we've had so far.