What we would have done the same

Most of this project was successful in achieving its goals. One of the things we would have done in the same manner is our regular meeting schedule. During normal times, the team would meet every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. This led to each team member making sure things were done so the rest of the team could review them at the next meeting. Also, members could show their progress and talk about the next steps in the project.

Second, if possible we would also have a resident “local-expert” who was not a member of the team. Fortunately for our project Andrew Lamonica was helpful in answering questions about the ActivMedia robots and the Saphira software. His answers to some of our more simple questions saved us hours of valuable research time and days of coding test modules to try to find out how pieces of the software worked.

Third, we would have kept our filmed progress. This made good material for our website, so that people could see what we had working. Also, it proved invaluable in both semesters of our project. It showed our up-to-date progress in action and we had to fall back on it several times due to robot malfunctions.

Fourth, we would have switched roles in our group. JD proved to be an invaluable leader. The group needed Peter to bring us all up to speed and forge ahead in new areas. If he had been leader, he would have been overwhelmed with too many leadership issues to do such a good job as lead programmer. This was a major switching of roles in our group, but this change was definitely for the best.

What we would have done differently

There are a few items we would have done differently that still would have enabled us to complete a successful project. First of these items would have been setting more achievable goals for each of the three successive releases. This is especially true of the third release where all of the previous knowledge had to be pulled together to form a completed project.

Second, we would have started code integration a bit earlier or at least researched this item before release 3. In the midst of release 3, we had a great deal of trouble integrating four existing modules. Unfortunately, although all of our individual code worked well, it had problems working together due to the fact that all modules had shared resources (laser, gripper, and camera).