Project : Final Project

For your final project, you should program your robot to fulfill a goal. The nature of the goal is deliberately open-ended. Here are the project guidelines:

  • As the project earns an Odyssey Special Projects (SP) credit, there is a minimum of thirty hours of work on the part of each team member. You should maintain a journal to document this.
  • Topic selection:
    • Consider your submission for Project 1.
      • What were the fictional and real robots you explored?
      • From which of those might you draw inspiration for a topic?
      • From what other fictional or real robots might you draw inspiration?
    • Your final topic selection is very open, and ultimately can be anything upon which you and the instructor agree.
      • But it should be based upon an “interesting” task that is “contextualized”; that is, it should involve the application of robotics techniques towards a larger goal.
      • Both real and fictional tasks are excellent inspiration for this.
  • You may augment your robot with any hardware that you acquire.

Project Proposal

Each project proposal should include the following:

  • Team Members
  • A few paragraphs describing the project goals
  • A proposed timeline for completing the project, including intermediate goals

Final Paper

Each team submits one final project paper. It should include the following:

  • Project goals
  • Description of the metrics (qualitative and/or quantitative) used for determining project completion.
  • Degree to which each goal was completed.
  • Description of how the robot was programmed, and how that programming supported each goal.
  • Description of challenges encountered and how they were addressed.
  • Project log, documenting the following:
    • Start/end times of each work session.
    • Goals and accomplishments for each work session.
    • Participants in each work session.
    • Each participant must document 30 hours of work.
  • A conclusion summarizing the project.

Final Presentation

During the final exam period for the course (Tuesday, May 2, 2-5 pm) each student/team will deliver an oral presentation as follows:

  • Project goals
  • Degree of completion of goals
  • Description of challenges encountered and how they were addressed
  • Presentation of video recordings of the robot in action.
  • Conclusion summarizing the project.

Timeline

  • Tuesday, April 18
    • Project proposal due
    • Oral presentation of proposal by each /team
    • Written proposal submitted by each team
  • Thursday, April 20
    • Project work time during class
  • Tuesday, April 25
    • Each student/team orally presents progress during class
  • Thursday, April 27
    • Project work time during class
  • Tuesday, May 2
    • Final project presentations
    • Final papers due
  • Thursday, May 4
    • Feedback on Final papers
  • Tuesday, May 9
    • Revised final papers due
    • All makeup work due