As promised last week, this week our team headed out to the field with our liaisons to demo our robotic dog for the first time! While focusing on safety, we were each able to practice controlling the dog and test out different scenarios. In this way, we were able to identify some advantages and disadvantages of both the hardware and software that could only be determined through user experience. After walking the dog, we had a thorough meeting with the developers of our robotic dog, our liaisons, and coach to address specific challenges we might face to accomplish the desired features. This meeting gave us great perspective on the priorities and niche of knowledge of some of our key stakeholders and how we can best meet all their wants and needs in the scope of the project.

Continuing from last week, we further narrowed our brainstorming concepts with more robust specifications in mind. As we continue setting up the building phases of our project, we’ve addressed some of the risks and how we can mitigate them, as well as developed a timeline of when milestones will be completed to ensure progress. As we look forward, our team members will begin their equipment training to begin designing and building our test structures.