The majority of my learning in ME 250 occurred in the shop. With the help of Bob, John and my team mates, I learned a great deal about the various machines in the shop. While fabricating parts for our robot, I gained valuable hands on experience with the mill, lathe, water jet, and laser jet. I also learned a lot by asking questions to Mark, Davor, Sei Jin and Mike when our team was having difficulties with our double gear box. I also learned about designing parts with tolerances and I became more adept at using Solidworks. In addition, I learned how designs can be driven by the materials given and about the limitations a predetermined kit can impose on creativity and functionality.
The lectures were full of information, but the information they presented was too broad which made it difficult to grasp everything that was being presented. I believe narrowing the focus of the lectures would have helped exponentially with the class because so much information was presented in each lecture that it was difficult to see how the material applied to the project. Also by narrowing the focus, it would have been easier to prepare for the final because it would have made it easier to know what to expect and to prepare for the exam. I also believe that the final was too long in length. It was hard to thoroughly answer each question and finish every section. This made me feel that the exam was more testing how fast I could write the answers as opposed to what I knew about the subject.
I believe that the lecture and labs should be more directly correlated. At times, it felt that the lectures and labs were total separate classes. It felt like the homework assignments and the lab assignments could have more directly related to the robot designed. It is of my opinion that they could have been optimized to teach the students skills that they needed while designing their robots.
I also believe that we should have spent more time getting trained in the machine shop because it felt like we were immediately expected to know how to machine parts perfectly after just three sessions of basic training. Had we had more time to learn about how to use the machines, we could have been more efficient using the machines as well as been more precise making parts. This would have lead to better final machine, and more time to practice driving. I believe that the schedule should have driver practice built into it. I feel that many of the machines performances at the expo would have been better had the teams had time practicing with the robots they designed. This would have helped prevented driver mistakes during the expo, like driving into the slot.
In addition to having time for drivers to practice, I believe that having a third field, more control systems, and fresh charged batteries would have been useful. Having these items available would have allowed teams to test their machines and make sure their designs worked. By having more, teams would not just have to sit around in the shop waiting for time with the controller. Also by having fresh charged batteries teams would be able to see how their robots would act on a full charge and to determine how battery charge affected their performance.
I also believe that the competition should have a bearing on our grade in the class. It is of my opinion that part of designing and manufacturing a project is proving that it works, and that it performs. I believe it is unfair to just grade the performance on one single match especially when it was the first time some teams had ever driven their robots with the field fully set up. For example, with our machine, our motor blew out 30 seconds into our seeding round so we had to play without our most critical module working. We were still able to score 50 grams, but when we reran our robot with the motor working, we were able to score 154 grams. This however is not reflected on our seeding round. It would have also been nice to have known the setup of the balls prior to the day of the seeding, because it could have affected the strategy of picking up balls. I also believe that the seeding round ignored that some teams decided to design their robots to play a defensively and maybe they could not score many points, but they denied the other team from scoring points, so they could still win in competition.
The CAD model that we used to design our robots was different than the field that was created. In the CAD model, the ball holders are flush with the carpet, and in real life this is not the case. The majority of our teams brainstorming and original designs were made with the CAD model since we did not have that much access to the field. This lip however caused our team to have to change some of our drivetrain designs costing us valuable time. Another issue that arose from the field was the variance in the slots. Because the slots on the two tables were not cut the same, our robot deployed differently on each table and sometimes our robot was unable to score balls because of this difference. This lead to some design changes in the last few days which would not have been necessary had the field been built to specifications given to us in the rules, and the CAD model. It would also have been nice to solidify the rules prior to the start of the semester. At times, it felt that some of the rule changes eliminated ideas that our group had been working on and would cause us to spend more time redoing work we had already done because the rules had changed.
One other thing that I would suggest to make Slotbot’s a more exciting competition would be to change how teams compete in it. I believe that if the rules were changed so that it was a two on two competition the expo would be more thrilling to watch. This would also add an interesting strategy component to the game. Teams would have to figure out how they would play with and against other teams. There could be a round of seeding where teams are ranked by how they perform in the completion with other teams. Then the top teams could pick a team mate to play with in an elimination round. I would then change the elimination round to a best out of three to advance in each bracket. These changes would make the competition last longer, but I feel it would give teams more time to actually compete with their robot. In my mind, more time to compete is beneficial because teams put in a lot of time on their robots and just playing once in the competition does not seem fair for the amount of work put into the robot.
To improve my performance in this class, I could have gone to office hours more. Unfortunately, with my schedule it was difficult to make the office hours offered. Also, I believe my performance would have improved had I had more training on the various machines available to us in the machine shop.
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