Progress Report

Progress report

Progress:
This week we researched different drones that could carry out the tasks needed. The drone must be able to carry a certain payload (stack of papers), and be able to maneuver through small spaces with ease. Most importantly, this drone must be able to be programmed autonomously using either raspberry pi or Arduino. Our drone selections must also meet the $1000 budget given to us.

Problems solved:
Budget was a problem at first, but with further research we were able to find a bunch of drones that met our financial limitations.

Lessons learned:
this week, we learned that our drone cannot be perfect. There will always be something (weather it be size, weight, or strength of rotors) that will limit us from having the drone fly at its greatest potential.

Problem:
At this point in our drone research, we have not encountered any problems except for a limited number of drones with reasonable flight times. Some drones only have 12-14 minute flight times, which may not be enough for a long range delivery if it were to be used in a warehouse or large office building.

Plan:
Our plan is to decide on a drone we like and order it. We are also going to move onto the research of our algorithm and hardware. Once the drone arrives, we can play around with the box building and other fun things like that.

Progress Report

Patent Research

Progress:

Tasks Accomplished: This week we continued our research on Patents and through the USPTO we managed to find many new patents that related to our main project. We also did a powerpoint explaining in depth some of the more important patents we found, we explained ways in which what we researched could be implemented into our drone delivery system. This patent research took us longer than we expected but it has helped in opening our eyes to different ideas we could implement. Things such as a main base in various rooms that guides the drone rather than having the drone sense on it own. With our environment being controlled there is no need to have sensors on the drone, a simple mother base could navigate it through the already mapped out hallways. The patents our group members focused on were:

Gui: Containers/Receptacles

Vasil: Delivery/Design & functions of drone 

Arianna: Flying vehicles/robots

Ben: Ornamental design to drone

Sebastian: Batteries (rechargeable)/Navigation 

Problems Solved: 

We were successful in dividing the research and finishing up finding all the patents we could. We also managed to get in our powerpoint on time and present to the whole class. 

Lessons Learned: 

This week, we strengthened our skills/knowledge in patent research and research in general. We were also able to find new ideas/concepts we could integrate into our final design. 

New Ideas: For now like last week, our project idea remains mostly untouched. We are pretty set with what we wanna do and one of our biggest worries at this moment is finding the right drone. However, one idea I did find intriguing was the fact we could have stations in each room to navigate the drone instead of having the drone navigate itself. 

Problem:

We didn’t encounter any big problem this week as we still focused on the patent research and the group was actually able to gain control of more patents. We solved our problem of last week with the lack of patents. 

Plan:

Our plan now is to hopefully move on from the patent research and begin more in-depth research pertaining to the overall construction of our drone and all the coding. We are still pretty unsure where we want to start with this project so it is up to us to stay on track and follow our diagrams. However like I said as far as patent research we should be done.

Patent Research

Progress:
Tasks Accomplished: Successfully started the patent research to find projects similar to ours, or projects that might be the basis for some of the drone's components. We shared a Google Docs spreadsheet to list all the patents that are relevant to our project (see picture below). Moreover, because our project encompasses many categories/projects, we are dividing the research into different classifications, so that each group member can find patents that relate to different components of our project. Group members are researching the following topics:
Gui: Containers/Receptacles
Vasil: Transportation/Delivery
Arianna: Flying vehicles/robots
Ben: Wireless connection to robots (via apps or websites)
Sebastian: Drones

Problems Solved: We were successful in dividing the research into manageable portions for each member, so that research can go faster and so that it can be more efficient.

Lessons Learned: This week, we gained new skills/knowledge regarding patent research and research in general. We are now able to find a patent that relates to our project and go through similar patents so that we can see the extent to which the category has been developed, making it easier to see what we need to do for our own project.

New Ideas: For now, our project idea remains mostly untouched. The main idea that came up through the research, which we might implement into our project, is the idea of a container with a sliding tray. This reduces the space that it occupies when it is closed while still allowing the container to hold reasonable amount of content.

Problem:
The main issue right now is finding patents that are closely related to our project. We are finding many patents that do relate to our project, but not in a very significant way, which makes it a little harder to compare our project to them in a way that might cause changes in our original idea. Besides this problem, everything is running smoothly. However, our original schedule has been pushed back by about a week to allow space for this patent research. When our project officially begins, we will be researching the different components that we will use and how to implement them in our project. In other words, we will be researching the materials/software/hardware that we need in order to complete the project.

Plan:
The plan right now to solve the patent issue is just to research more patents that are similar to the ones we are finding. That way, we will (hopefully) come across patents that have a close relationship to our project or to certain components in our project.
The issue regarding the delay in our project schedule can be easily solved. The project remains as it is described in our Gantt Chart, but everything will be pushed back a week. However, in an ideal situation, where no major problems arise, we will be able to finish certain tasks before the scheduled date. This is, of course, in an ideal situation.
In the coming week, Gui and Vasil will be researching software that will be used in our project, while Arianna, Ben, and Sebastian will be researching the drone that will be used, along with the components required for the drone to complete its objective (sensors, charging station, container, etc.).

Further Planning Completed

     This week was spent completely on developing a proper project schedule. It included all of the tasks that need to be completed before we can assemble our drone for prototyping. Initially, we began by looking at our action plan for the semester. From there we elaborated on possible extensions and requirements for further research on several different components. We placed our research as the first course of action in our project, followed by hardware and software integration. Using the arrow and Gantt charts, we learned that some activities are going to require more time than we predicted. This was incorporated in our project schedule by spreading out the work and creating parallels.

     We encountered some difficulties with the Gantt chart program itself, as well as with creating dependencies in our arrow chart. The Gantt chart program kept freezing and crashing, which slightly hindered our progress on the schedule. The arrow chart was difficult for a couple of reasons. It was very hard to determine some dependencies without some further research on previous nodes. As of now we require nothing new. We just need to begin our research and see how it lifts off to determine further problems/questions.

      As far as showing the work load for individual group members, it will displayed in the pictures attached. As of now, we do not have any experiments to conduct. We just need to begin learning more information of the drone.

We haven’t had much time in the classroom since the last class however we tweaked our drone design because we found out that our prior idea was already thought of.  

The problems that we encountered were:

1. our project has already been done by Amazon and other companies.
2. thinking of a new topic for our project
3. changing our project from a drone delivery system to a first aid kit drone.

Our plan is to design our own first aid kit and attach it to the drone so that it can be delivered to a person in need. We need to research different types of first aid kits and how to make the drone do what we want it to do. We also must make a project map for the future, and include all relevant steps in the map. We are also going to individually assign each person tasks that we believe would best suit them.