This week, we made some great progress in our prototyping stage:

• 3D printed and tested the first iteration of the hardware mount.
• Designed a second iteration of the mount design with modifications that improved upon the first design’s limitations.
• Developed and tested the fundamental components of a few of the software applications required for our project.
• Configured additional sensors to detect movement as well as output relevant data for other software applications to interpret.

Additionally, we analyzed the results from the survey that was conducted at the Monster Jam event on October 29 and made a few modifications and additions to our project plan to be able to better address customer needs and wants.

This week Monster Gator started shifting from a design and documentation phase to the prototyping phase.

• We had our usual start to the week with our weekly liaison meeting on Tuesday, where we got our updated PDR report approved by the liaisons.
• Kevin, our team’s Industrial Engineer, provided the final version of the customer survey, which will be conducted during the Monster Jam event on October 29 to obtain customer insights and expectations, to the liaisons.
• We returned back to the usual class and lecture format this week after a gap of two weeks where we had peer reviews and workshops.
• The team then came up with a prototype plan and goals & expectations for the Prototype Inspection Day which would be held on November 15.
• Chris, our team’s Electrical Engineer, started working with additional sensors that would be required for our project and configuring them to provide the required data.
• Jacob, our team’s Mechanical Engineer, completed the first iteration for the design of the hardware mount, which will be 3D printed for further testing in the coming week.
• Mark and Tarang, our team’s Software Engineers, completed testing the final piece of the puzzle for concept selection from the two choices that were ordered for physical testing and started reviewing the software programs created by the Phase 1 team.
• Tarang also had the opportunity to attend the Monster Jam event in Orlando on October 29 and experience the truck ride himself as well as watch the wonderful Monster Jam event.

This week Monster Gator accomplished the following for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) segment of the project:

• Presented the most significant aspects of the PDR to the liaisons and other stakeholders on Tuesday.
• Had a Q&A session to answer any questions regarding the PDR presentation and received feedback.
• Created an action plan to acknowledge and address the provided feedback.
• Provided the PDR report to the liasions at the end of the presentation for a detailed look at the project design.
• Submitted the an updated version of the PDR report on Friday that incorporated updates that addressed the liaisons’ concerns, feedback, and suggestions.

In class, we attended the “From College to Career – Success Tips for the New Engineer” workshop with Mr. Mark Sanders, “A Thorough Introduction to the Scrum Framework” workshop with Dr. Manuel Bermudez, and “Divergent Thinking and Emphatic Listening” workshop with Prof. Tina Mullen, where we gained insightful knowledge on topics that can help us succeed in this project as well as our future careers. Additionally, we received the parts that we had ordered for concept selection this week and we started testing them to finalize the concept that we want to move ahead with, along with creating some CAD designs for the hardware components of our project.

We started the week with a liaison meeting, followed by the class, on Tuesday where we accomplished the following:

• Liaison meeting
  • Status update on work completed during the week.
  • A walkthrough of our next steps of action.
  • Q & A to clarify any questions that us or the liaisons had.
  • A brief overview of what the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) would be.
  • Request to invite other project stakeholders in the company to attend the PDR presentation.
• IPPD Class
  • Had PDR Peer Review Presentations instead of the usual class.
  • Viewed PDR presentations for Leak Indicators, Fun Raisers, ROCCstart, and SurgiGators, and provided individual and team feedback.
  • Demonstrated our PDR Presentation including Q & A.
• After Class
  • Reviewed individual feedback to improve our presentation skills.
  • Reviewed team feedback to improve the presentation slides and content.
  • Completed the Peer Review Feedback Response memo where we identify the main issues in our presentation and action items to address them.

We then worked on completing the PDR Report and fixing the PDR presentation based on the feedback from Wednesday through Friday. We reviewed our work with Dr. Latorre during our coach meeting on Thursday and received feedback on places to improve. The final version of the Report and Presentation was submitted to our coach on Friday for a final review before presenting it to our sponsor in the coming week.

Back after Hurricane Ian, we started our week with a liasion meeting on Tuesday, where we discussed our current thoughts and plans after the site visit and had a brief Q&A session to clarify some of our questions as well as any questions that our liaisons had. In class, we had a wonderful workshop on developing impactful elevator pitches from Dr. Lawrence Tinker.

On Thursday, we had a team meeting as well as a coach meeting where we accomplished the following things:

• A review of our project roadmap.
• Concept Generation and Selection for a particular component of our project.
• Review of our work since the site visit with our coach.
• Placed order for two parts that were narrowed down from Concept Selection for further testing.

We had another team meeting on Sunday where we worked on developing our Product Architecture as well as piecing together a presentation for our Preliminary Design Report.

Monster Gator had a wonderful start to the week with the sponsor site visit on Monday. Our team, along with our coach Dr. Latorre, had the chance to visit Feld Entertainment’s headquarters in Palmetto, Florida, where we met our liaison and project executive, learned about the company’s history, and got a tour of the entire facility. It was a surreal experience to witness all the behind-the-scenes work and efforts that go into bringing a show to life. We got to see and analyze the Monster Truck that would be at the core of our project. We had the opportunity to speak to a few of the staff members that are involved with our project as well as the monster truck in general to get better acquainted with the truck mechanisms. Having a look at the monster truck answered a lot of our questions, giving us a clearer vision for our future plan, but also left us coming up with exciting new and innovative ideas. We took the components from Phase 1 of the project with us so that we could have a closer look at them and reuse some of them to implement an improved solution. Apart from the trip, the car rides were also filled with brainstorming, detailed analysis of ideas, and fun team bonding interactions.

On Tuesday, we had a virtual meeting for the class because of Hurricane Ian, and the college was closed from Wednesday to Friday for the same reason. We decided to take a break for the rest of the week and instead focus on everyone’s safety first. We made sure that we would not fall behind the schedule by much since we had accomplished most of our primary objectives for the week from the site visit.

This week Monster Gator had a quick yet highly productive meeting with our liaison and executive. We were able to get answers to a lot of our questions as well as make some plans for our highly anticipated site visit for the coming week. It was a pretty busy week for Monster Gator as we spent most of our time working on the First Month report. We worked on performing a House of Quality Analysis to identify our TPMs. We performed extensive research to learn about patents and technology that could potentially help us as well as competitive products. We also prepared our preliminary project roadmap which gives us a better view of our future tasks and helps us stay on track for a timely success of the project. During our coach meeting, we reviewed our work and got insightful feedback from Dr. Latorre to improve our work.

On Saturday, we attended the Team Building Workshop & White Belt Six Sigma Training presented by Florida Power & Light. During the workshop, we learned about problem-solving processes and ways to optimize them to get the best results. We teamed up with Veriforce for the interactive activities where we acted as a car dealership, traced out the procedures, found parts of the processes that added no value and the root causes of delays, brainstormed to come up with solutions to improve the process, and put the proposed solution in action to significantly improve the results. On Sunday, we worked on the remaining parts of the First Month report and prepared for the visit to the sponsor’s facility.

This week we had our first liaison meeting where we interacted with representatives from Feld Entertainment and learned more about their expectations and goals for this project. On Tuesday, we finalized the list of stakeholders for our project during the in-class activity. On Thursday, we had a team meeting where we worked on creating a draft for our project design specifications. We will continue to update these specifications over the next few weeks as we do more research and get a better understanding of the metrics for our design. During the week, we also reviewed the project files from Phase 1 of this project to get a better understanding of the project and the solutions implemented by the team before us.

This week Team 08 has become Monster Gator. We are Mark McGinnis (CS), Tarang Donga (CS), Jacob Zecher (ME), Kevin Busto (ISE), and Christopher Kim (EE). Our project is sponsored by Feld Entertainment and is a Phase Two continuation of a previously completed IPPD project from the 2019-2020 academic year. This project will be completed under the guidance of Dr. Edward Latorre. We are excited to work with Feld Entertainment during our senior year!

Things we completed this week included choosing our team name and designing the logo, receiving and understanding the scope of work, and meeting with our coach and setting up the meeting with our sponsor and liaisons.