CSE 480 - Senior Design Project EE 491 - Senior Design SYS 491 - Senior Design ME 492 - Senior Mechanical Engineering Design Project Winter 2013

January 3, 2013
Last update: January 17, 2013

Winter 2013 Design Project Description:

Design, build, test and compete with a device that can run a slalom course through 5-7 small orange plastic cones (Epic 12" Soccer Cone), turn around the last cone and slalom back through the cones to the starting line as fast as possible. The cones will be placed in a straight line perpendicular to the starting/finish but will not be evenly spaced. The first cone will be 3-5 meters from the starting/finish line and there will be 2-4 meters between the cones. Devices will start behind the starting/finish line and aligned with the line of cones. Devices that touch a cone or miss going between a pair of cones will be assessed a 1 minute penalty, devices that do not go around the last cone or go more than two meters away from the line of cones will be disqualified for that run. The device must be self-contained; no external power supplies can be used during the competition. The devices must operate autonomously, and must be able to accommodate the variable number of cones without re-configuration.

Competition: On Thursday April 18, 2013 a competition will be held for all of the design groups, beginning at 10 am, on the sidewalk in the SEB/DHE/HHS courtyard, regardless of weather conditions. Each team will attempt the course up to three times, the attempt with the lowest time, including penalties, will be used to determine the competition standings. The score for each run will be the time, including any penalties, multiplied by the cost of the device configured to runs the course.

Discussion for the final written reports:

For your final written reports, in addition to your technical discussions, you are to discuss applications of the technology that you are exploring and developing in this project. For your final report, discuss various applications of the technology, with specific emphasis on:

• Engineering Standards - describe the process in which you searched for applicable professional engineering standards and applied them in your design.
• Safety - what sort of constraints must be accounted for if such technology was used on a large scale?
• Economic factors - How much would it cost to implement such technology and what sort of jobs would it impact (consider improvements to safety as well as displacing jobs)? What sort of impact would this have on the acceptance of such technology?
• Reliability - if this technology was to be used in mass applications, what sort of reliability and failure rates would be acceptable?
• Aesthetics - what sort of additional devices or accessories could be used to make this technology as aesthetically attractive as possible while retaining its essential functionality?
• Potential customers - who would be the consumer for such technology? Consider the consumer of this technology; who would be the consumer? A government agency? Manufacturers? Insurance companies? The public at large?
• Societal impact - what would be the potential benefits to society for the applications that you discuss? What would be the potential drawbacks?