Team Photo

Meet TEAM FIRST Aid.

Wednesday's Meeting September 29

At the beginning of our meeting today, our team split up into individual sub teams. We split up into a programing team, a robot building team, and a marketing team.

The programing team, consisting of Curtis, Teddy, and Alex, worked on learning to program the robot to follow a black line. Curtis, who is the head of the programing team as he is an experienced programmer, mentored Teddy and Alex. After some critical thinking, Teddy and Alex made a successful program with little assistance!

The robot building team, consisting of Daniel, Spencer, and Josh, worked vigorously on building an arm for the robot that will accomplish several missions on the mission board. They also worked on adding the ultrasonic sensor. They made great progress.

The marketing team which consisted of Madeline and Jessica, worked on writing a letter to send out to companies in hopes of getting their sponsorship. Later, after finishing the letter, Spencer showed us a letter he had written for the same purpose. It was great! Now we have two different style letters to pick from.

The progress we are making is looking promising.

-Madeline

Picasa Link

Here is the link to pictures of our team on the Picasa website.

http://picasaweb.google.com/graciousprofessionals/

-Madeline

Wednesday's Meeting

We had received an assignment on Monday to talk to friends and relatives who have biomedical engineering as a part of their life. Since then, Curtis talked with his grandma who is his "inspiring person". His grandmother had two knee replacements, and she suggested a few problems and solutions with her surgery.
  
One of the problems was with her CPM machine. This machine continuously bends and straightens her knee to keep it from sticking in one position. She had to lay in her bed all day with her leg strapped to the machine. However, she could not unstrap the Velcro in times when she needed to move, such as going to the bathroom. Because the machine was holding her leg in place all the way up to her hip, being in her sixties and still recovering from surgery, she couldn't raise herself to reach the straps. This prevented her from moving anywhere without assistance with the Velcro. This proved to be quite a hassle, especially at night.
  
During Curtis's interview, his grandma expressed that what she wanted was a way to unstrap the Velcro with out needing assistance. She suggested something to lift her to a sitting position might work, so she could undo the Velcro if she needed to get out of bed.

Yesterday, our team brainstormed ideas to accomplish this, or another way of enabling her to unstrap her leg without assistance. We thought of a few ideas.

1. Have a sort of seat belt strap instead of a Velcro strap, so she could just press a button with a cane to get herself out.
2. Have a very precise cane with a claw on the end to be able to grab the Velcro.
3. Have a remote to automatically undo the strap when needed.
4. Have a device to lift her to a sitting position, enabling her to unstrap herself.

Next we discussed each idea and what ideas might work well together. Although the lifting device might be nice, we found a few things that may not work with it, and so decided to see what else we could come up with. We discussed different options with the cane idea, but in the end, decided that it wouldn't solve all of the problems as well as we had hoped. Already having a remote to adjust the movement of the leg, adding a button to undo straps, shouldn't be too hard to add on. After further discussion, we decided that the seat belt strap idea paired up with the remote idea, would be the best solution.


We're looking forward to Monday's meeting when we hear what results other teammates get from their interviews with their "inspiring people." We plan to pick our final project on Monday as well.


-Madeline & Curtis

Monday and Wednesday's meeting

At our Monday and Wednesday meetings, we shared some of the research that each team member did since the meeting before. Each team member added to the conversation if they knew something about the topic that they wanted to share. Here is a listing of body systems/parts and potential problems we researched, shared and discussed:

• Heart
• Joints 
• Glands
• Bones 
• Immune system

As we talked about our topics, we discovered that we could do further research. We hope that one of these interesting topics will be the base of our Team Project for the FIRST LEGO League competition. 

On Monday we spent time looking at the missions on the board.  We enjoyed deliberating about each mission and the possible ways we could have a robot accomplish the challenges. And we noted some obstacles we need to watch out for on the board. Some very interesting and intriguing ideas were introduced and examined. We generated ideas to solve potential problems that the robot might struggle with on the board, such as sharp turns the robot must accomplish.

On Wednesday after our research sharing time, we gathered around the board once again to consider possible robot body, robot arm, and attachment designs. We analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of using different wheel sizes, skids and treads. Josh, a new member to the team, received lessons from Curtis, an experienced member, on how to have the robot follow a black line.

-Madeline

This Year's Kickoff Meeting

At our Wednesday meeting, we shared the research that each member had done as an assignment from the Summer meetings. We read through and discussed the project for this year so we could fully understand it. Then we brainstormed ideas on what to research to get started on the project. Next, we grouped all of the brainstormed ideas into topics. Each team member then chose the topic they wanted to research for homework to do before the next meeting on Monday. The last thing we did before closing the meeting with a meeting summary, was to gather around this year's mission board to see what it looked like, and to begin planning mission strategies.

-Madeline & Curtis

Looking Forward

We are all excited. Tomorrow will be the kickoff meeting of this years FIRST LEGO League challenge, "Body Forward". The missions may be challenging, but our team will confidently conquer any that stand in our way.

- Madeline and Curtis