Missions and Priorities

Last week we worked on developing a strategy for accomplishing our robot missions.  We looked at all of the missions based on how hard we thought they would be to complete, and how many point they were worth. We did this by: a) Dividing the group into pairs and assigning each pair a set of two missions. b) Having each pair think hard about how they would get a robot to do each of the two missions. c) Deciding whether the mission would be Easy, Medium, or Hard to complete. We then gave all the easy missions a score of 3, the medium missions a score of 2, and the hard missions a score of 1. We then looked at the points awarded for accomplishing each mission.  If the number of points was 10 or less we gave the mission a score of 1.  If it was more than 10 but less than or equal to 20 we gave it a score of 2. If it was worth more than 20 we gave it a 3. We then combined the scores to give a priority, with 6 being the highest priority possible (easy and lots of points) and 2 being the lowest priority (hard and not worth many points.)  This gave us a list as follows: Mission Pts Pts Score* Diff Diff Score* Overall Score Shark Shipment 27 3 Easy 3 6 All Samples 35 3 Easy 2 5 Beekeeping 15 2 Easy 2.5 4.5 Feeding 80 3 Medium 1.5 4.5 Camera Recovery 15 2 Medium 2 4 Training and Research 27 3 Medium 1 4 Biomimicry 15 2 Medium 2 4 Milking Automation 15 2 Medium 2 4 Panda Release 10 2 Medium 2 4 Seal in Base 1 1 Easy 3 4 Milk in Base 1 1 Medium 3 4 Milk on Ramp 4 1 Medium 2.5 3.5 Animal Conservation 20 2 Medium 1.5 3.5 Prosthesis 15 1 Medium 2 3 Service Dog 15 1 Medium 2 3 Clearly the Shark Shipment is the mission to start with.  Olivia and Lily had written a program last week to do the shark mission, but it wasn't as reliable as we would like.  Nick, Neshaya, Lais and Alyssa worked some more on adjusting the speed and alignment and got it to work five times in a row.  Yay!  (And Yay is the secret word for this week.) Tara, Macy and Hannah got the Animal Exchange mission model pretty much completed so we have what we need to try all the missions now. Also last week we talked more about possible research projects and narrowed the choices down to: a) Bees and colony collapse b) Animal counting c) Spectacled bears. Those interested in each possible topic should come this week with whatever research they could do over the past two weeks.  Each person or group interested in a topic can present the problem that interests them, and the possible innovation that would help solve that problem.  After the presentations we'll vote on which project the team should do.