Date: 02 12 2008
Duration of activity: ~5 hours
Group members participating: all group members
1. The Goal
The goal of this lab session is to discuss the expectations of the project both software- and construction-wise, and to start building the LEGO construction.
2. The Plan
During this lab session our group took three very important steps:
- We discussed the overall project,
- we started planning the work and
- we started building a prototype.
3. The Results
At this point we have agreed to make an X-Y-coordinator. The envisioned construction consists of some platforms/axes that are able to move independently. No concrete implementation aspects are discussed as the highest-prioritized issue is the actual building.
All group members have different ideas on how the LEGO build has to look like, how to be build and in which manner to behave. Discussions were the main activity during the time that was spent.
The idea of the project is to make a drawing robot. For that, a part of the robot (some sort of ``head'') has to be able to move backwards/forwards, and left/right. The outcome of the building we did was two platforms that enable this kind of movement.
The process of building was to ``discuss'', then ``build'' and finally ``try out''. As there are no exact understanding of what we are expecting to get, structure-wise, there is no exact understanding of what exactly is the best way to get to the goal.
This way of working gave some fine results. The basic ideas has been generated and some basic structure has been built. The prototype we have so far looks like this:
During this lab session our group discussed all the expectations related to the end-project. We also did some actual building: So far we have some sort of lower platform (handling the x-axis) and a construction of a carriage that should be able to go back and forth on that platform.