After returning from Thanksgiving break, Gator Waves spent this past week focusing on the upcoming SLDR event and the redesign of our fall prototype. Leading up to Tuesday, our team spent time preparing our presentation and finalizing the draft of our report. On November 30th, we participated in the peer review SLDR event. This allowed us to receive feedback from other teams regarding our presentation style and content. The suggestions were helpful and informative, and many of them are being incorporated into the final presentation for the real SLDR event on December 7th. Furthermore, after the peer review, we had a meeting with our coach Dr. Hans van Oostrom, where we discussed his feedback as well as some suggestions he had for proceeding with our redesign of the fall prototype.

On Wednesday morning, our team met with Dr. Subhash to discuss the upcoming SLDR event and our progress with the project. We received a great deal of feedback regarding the update of the fall prototype, which has led to a new design of the housing and the need to order a number of additional materials (steel bars, strain gauges, etc). On Wednesday afternoon, the electrical engineers met to discuss the design of a PCB for the circuits currently used in operating the prototype. During this meeting, we also reached out to some professors for advice on selecting sensors for the control system.

Moving forward, our team is putting the final touches on the SLDR report and presentation for Tuesday, December 7th. Furthermore, the plan is to have new timing measurements taken using the redesigned prototype by the end of the semester. This information will help influence our plans moving forward for the spring.