This sample has be taken from the 2016-2017 report submitted for and awarded the Neil Armstrong Best Design Award.
*Any typos or grammatical errors appeared in the original document.
The bulk of the design and construction work on our rover takes place in our Design Den. The Design is a 4,000 sq. ft. maker space and shop, it houses a number of power tools, welders, plasma cutter, 3D printers for prototyping, CNC ShopBot router, and laser cutter. The Design Den is open throughout the school day. Engineering and robotics classes meet there, but the space is large enough that students may also come in and work on independent projects or other school projects during our free periods or study halls.
A few veteran team members began work on the 2017 rover a couple of weeks into the school year, spurred on by the angst caused by some bad luck at the 2016 competition (one seat back ripped out on the first day of the race and on the second day we had a pedal shear out of one of our commercially purchased crank sets). The veterans were determined to understand what went wrong and how to improve for 2017. Additionally, the team’s failure to conquer the Martian Butte inspired a complete overhaul of the wheel design and drivetrain.
To improve our efficiency, the team broke into subgroups (wheels, composite materials, telemetry, and frame & drivetrain) to research ideas that could be useful to our design/redesign work for our 2017 rover. The team began having informal lunch meetings in September as well as working after school on Monday and Thursdays. We were fortunate that once November arrived thirteen of our seventeen-team members were in a class dedicated to the rover project. We met every other day for 80 minutes, continued our lunch meetings, and added six hour Saturday work sessions in January that continued into March.
Each rover subgroup added their workflow into a Gantt chart, which allowed us to lay out the entire project and ensure, as best as possible, that each subgroup milestone fed together to meet larger team goals. We have learned from experience that it is best to have the rover completed two if not three weeks prior to competition. This allows our drivers time to practice driving, carrying, and unfolding the rover. It has also been our experience that something breaks during those test-drives. We correct the weakness, thereby improving the rover’s performance and reliability during competition.
Our goal for 2017 is to have our first test drive by March 1st, we met that deadline three days early!