Progress Check 2: Back to Reality

Progress has not been good for now. The team has not been capable of working together for now but will have a few meetings this week. The original plan had to be aborted and a new machine had to be thought about. The difference is that the new machine will push the limits of dimensions and will have a total length of 100 cm. This will permit it to have a dual projectile system which will launch 3 birdies simultaneously at different angles of two pads instead of just one. This measure of action had to be taken because of the clarification of one of the rules, stating that all birdies must land in the same corridor as the one that they have been thrown from. Please note that a detailed plan of this version of the machine will be coming soon.

There have been a few problems encountered along the way, going from problems on the machine itself to problems between teammates. Here is a table showing some of the main difficulties.

Table 1: Difficulties encountered during the project

Machine Difficulties	Project Difficulties
Electrical circuit	Communication
Materials	Darius’ ski racing
Machine dimensions

The problems with the machine have been mostly due to planning and resources. For example, we are currently having trouble finding a used electrical circuit for our machine and will probably be forced to buy components to build a new one our selves. In terms of materials, we wanted to use cardboard as a chassis at the beginning but realized that it wasn’t solid enough to hold up by it self, so we will use wood planks. We tried to use wood planks that were hanging around our homes, but they are not of the right dimensions, so we have started asking around for thinner ones that may suit our machine better. As it has been mentioned in the rules, we would like to minimize the mount of material that we will need to buy and would like to reuse the most of it possible. In terms of the social difficulties, the problems have been mostly with communication and availabilities. In the first place, we did not decide well enough who would work on what. This meant that we where extremely disorganized heading into the spring break. To add up, Darius had ski races all week, and struggled to work on the machine as he was not home. This has all lead up to us being delayed and not have as much progress done as wanted. Not to worry, there are at least three meetings scheduled this week and the machine should be well underway by the end of it.

In terms of the project, around 2 to 3 hours have been spent on the planning and construction of the project. There has not been any face to face meetings yet, but there have been conference calls done on the phone. For the next week, Olivier will continue working on the body of the machine, and on the construction of the wheels and on the suspensions. Meanwhile, Darius will try to work on the electrical circuit and on the launch component of the machine. We expect that 75 percent of the machine should be finished by the end of the week, and that it should be ready for testing by next Monday.