Weekly Progress Reports (see sidebar), the Gantt chart, and this Project Management page should be printed out before meetings with the sponsor and instructor.
All team members should be able to explain all items on the progress report.
Place a "*" at the beginning of the title of the active week Progress Report (see * in sidebar).
Overview of Project Context
Dr. Joiner’s lab is researching the sleep patterns of fruit flies contained in individual tubes. His lab and others have shown that arousal threshold is titratable with different environmental stimulus intensities. In order to provide a stimulus that will interrupt the flies’ sleep cycle in a controllable and adjustable manner, a mechanism must be developed that can disturb fruit flies at different intensities with repeatability and consistency. This will provide a more efficient and accurate data for Dr. Joiner’s lab to analyze.
Project Objectives
High Priority Objectives
· Create a machine that is automated,
· Effective in waking up the flies
· Does not require manual operation; stand-alone mechanism
· Programmable; Interfaced with MATLAB preferably
· Broad range of disturbance levels for the flies
· Repeatability
Second Priority Objectives
· Easy fabrication and programming for reproducibility for other labs
Other Constraints and Issues
· The mechanism must fit inside their incubators
· The mechanism must run off of one power supply
· The mechanism must be able to operate in the given temperatures of the incubator
· Constraint on the degrees of freedom of motion (perpendicular to the tube)
· Consistent disturbance felt among the flies
WOW Design Solution
To have both our high priority and second priority objectives met within our design, with all of our constraints and issues addressed. A specific design for our mechanism was not discussed, as long as our mechanism works efficiently.
Risk Reduction Objectives
Our objective is to wake up the flies, but we do not yet know the most efficient method to wake up the fruit flies. We will be exploring different types of motion (oscillatory, vibration, shock, etc.), as well as the most efficient way to produce these motions (cam, spring, etc.). Another area of concern is our ability to actually test the results of our machine (obtaining flies from Dr. Joiner and having them on predictable sleep cycle).
Intermediate Milestones
No specific milestones have been defined. Our main objective is to successfully create a working prototype in the early stages, which can be tested experimentally..
Individual Component Analysis Topics
- Programming, which controller to use
- Different testing rigs
- Mechanism to provide stimulation
- Method of testing/test schedule
- Summary of data/presentation of data
Weekly Meeting Time with sponsor:
Friday 4:30pm @ Biomedical Sciences Building