We’ve made it to our final event of the semester! The System Level Design Review was held this past week and was truly a success. The event began with some fantastic food, followed by a guided networking session with the industry liaisons. We gained critical insight into the common misconceptions of the professional world, as well as how to prepare and what skills are most important for new graduates.

Our team then presented all of the work we had completed thus far to Northrop Grumman, our peers, our faculty coach, and other corporate liaisons. We implemented the feedback we had received over the semester and presented a refined slide deck and a clear and thorough presentation. Our Northrop Grumman liaisons were very pleased with our presentation, and we were pleased with it, as well. The team is excited for the holiday break and eager to recharge so that we can hit the ground running next semester. Happy holidays and happy new year!

We had yet another busy week as this semester starts drawing to a close. The team devoted a lot of time and resources to writing the first draft of our System Level Design Review Report. We focused on the proof of concept of our design and the details of next semester’s design and testing process. Additionally, we prepared a presentation for the Peer Review SLDR presentation. Our presentation was successful, and we received a lot of good feedback that will be implemented prior to the final SLDR presentation.

Now, the team is looking forward to a week of rest, family, and good food and will come back ready to tackle the remaining few days of the semester. Happy Thanksgiving!

Our prototype inspection day was an overwhelming success! We spent many hours at the IPPD lab putting the final touches on all of our prototypes and were able to present many different types of media for our proof of concept. The presentation included a demo of the RFID system, an exploration of the user interface, a demo of direction detection from the ultrasonic sensor system, a CAD model of the full design, and a finite element analysis. The judges gave us useful feedback and were overall very pleased with the work we had done. Some of the positive feedback we received included our positive team dynamic, cohesive teamwork skills, and enthusiasm and preparedness in the presentation. As a team, we are very proud of what we have accomplished so far and are eager to begin implementing our full-scale solution next semester! Check out our gallery of pictures from this week:

The Gear Guardians had a busy week this week! We made significant progress in our prototype development and attended the White Belt Six Sigma Workshop with FPL.

As prototype inspection day nears, our software team has been hard at work with the RFID system. After spending a few days (and many hours) in the lab, we have successfully integrated the RFID module to update the user interface. We will be able to demo this functionality at PID.

Our mechanical team has been busy researching methods for direction detection and finalizing concept sketches. At the PID we will show CAD models of the system and give a demo of the sensors that will be used to determine direction in or out of a doorway.

Finally, some of our team members attended a workshop by Florida Power and Light. At this workshop, they obtained a certification for the 6 Sigma White Belt Program. This was a very busy week for us, so we are looking forward to the long weekend on Veteran’s Day and eagerly awaiting our presentation day on Tuesday!

Our team began building a prototype this week! In preparation for Prototype Inspection Day, we started working on the many components we plan to present for adjudication. The mechanical sub-team worked on their designs for the physical mount of the system, including antennas, RFID readers, the laser system, housing for the Raspberry Pi, docking integration, and cable management. They presented sketches of this design, as well as the construction of an antenna to use with our RFID module since off-the-shelf components would pose a pressing budget constraint.

The software sub-team got their hands on a Raspberry Pi and began working to understand its operating system and capabilities when interfacing with other components. They successfully accomplished their goal of this week: a wireframe/mock-up of the user interface that will be incorporated with the database. Additionally, they were able to connect a basic RFID reader to the Raspberry Pi and use it to read and write to a single RFID tag. The basic functionality of the UI and RFID module will be instrumental in demonstrating our proof-of-concept at the Prototype Inspection Day.

Finally, the biggest win of this week was the discovery of materials in the IPPD lab. As mentioned previously, the design of an antenna was vital because of the cost associated with purchasing one. Our team, however, was able to find and check out an antenna from the IPPD lab that reads the exact frequencies we planned to use. We will apply the antenna research to the handheld device instead. Additionally, we found another Raspberry Pi, an RFID reader and many RFID tags. These items will help us to produce a higher quality prototype while still remaining within out limited budget.

After coming off an exciting week of travel and presentations, our team began shifting gears to focus on the prototyping process. On Tuesday, we attended a lecture about prototypes and began the discussion for our next big deadline and event: Prototype Inspection Day (PID). During this period, we had time to discuss our goals and what we want to present at PID. Most of our discussion thus far has been at an overall system-interaction level, but now we are tasked with getting into the details of the technology components and how to create them.

Because our system is complex and requires integration between many different parts, we are splitting into hardware and software sub-teams. Connor, Isaac and Lucas are part of the hardware sub-team, Lyndsey, Victoria and Joseph are part of the software sub-team, and Michael is part of both, using his electrical engineering expertise to help integrate the mechanical design with the electronics and software. For the PID, we hope to have a model of our physical device, as well as a wireframe mock-up of the user interface that we will be implementing. Our team is excited to start working with the new technology and lean into the design process. Some of the best advice we have gotten so far is to embrace failure and document everything, and we will use this to guide us as we being the next phase of product and process design.