Mentor Contacts

RECIEVED- Joe Helble

Robert,

Thanks for the update and the link to your blog.  It’s well put together, and gives a good sense of the project and design process.  I have just a couple of questions and suggestions for you at this point in time.

(1) you did a nice job explaining the decision matrices as a means to guide your approach to each challenge.  I noticed, however, that for a few of them, the differences among some of the leading choices were fairly small (i.e. 1 point).   Since the numerical score associated with each criterion is fairly subjective, are there cases where you can explore perhaps two different options briefly before making a final design decision?

(2) you used the decision matrices to make a choice on the best way to meet each individual challenge, but my understanding is that each one of these “solutions” needs to be mounted on the vehicle at the same time.  (i.e., you don’t take oof the upward hook to mount the slide when moving from challenge 3 to 4, correct?).   If that is the case, have you considered a fifth matrix that would enable you to evaluate the merits of integrating the different components onto the core vehicle?   I can’t tell the size of your vehicle from the information I have seen, and if you have a large vehicle (and small claw, slide, etc.), then this isn’t an issue.   But if you need to worry about balancing the load, and making sure each “appendage” is free from interference from the other “appendages” during operation, an additional matrix that considers issues of integration could be helpful in making design choices.

(3) the relationship between the problem statement describing sand dune erosion and the amphibious needs of the vehicle wasn’t clear to me.  It may be in one of your earlier posts, but I didn’t get a good sense of this from the pages I read.

(4) in the Rationale Report, the sentence just above the first table isn’t complete.  I suspect some text was cut off when you added the table.

Let me know if you have any questions.  Overall, it seems you’ve gotten off to a good start on this.

Joe