This week is all about finishing. We are finishing up this stage of the project, finishing our time at SEED, and finishing our reign of the OEDK. As of last blog we were about to put together our final prototype, and this time we finally glue it together, test, and present our findings.

At the start of the week, we took our finished, polished pieces of wood and glued them together. We formed one complete, finished prototype, and it looks beautiful. We paraded this piece of art work for a while, then jumped into testing and documentation. Writing up all the documents and instruction manuals and build guides is incredibly boring and slow, so I’ll skip that. Our testing was a little more interesting.

To test the ability of our device to detect scratches and cuts, we did some simulations of using the device. After a tussle with a red pen, my foot became scratched and bruised. I used the device to scan my marked up foot, then saved the photos. Kelvin and I both repeated this with marks in different spots 5 total times. We showed these scans to unsuspecting test subjects around the OEDK and asked them to find all the marks. This tests ended up being way more difficult than we anticipated, and people only got about 2 out of every 3 marks, which isn’t acceptable. The failure might have been from our device, or possibly from the nature of the experiment. Most likely a combo of the two, but that problem is for another team, since we have run out of time for the summer.

During this time, we also prepared for our final presentation, where we showed off everything that we had done throughout the summer. We displayed our prototypes, documented our decisions, and generally said what we had been up to. This presentation was a huge success. We had no major slip-ups, and we concisely explained what our prototype does and how it works. Afterwards, we pivoted towards transfer documents, stuff meant for the next team that will take on the project. This includes CAD models, instructions for building, commented code, and all other sorts of fun stuff. This is still a little bit in progress, but the next team will have a very good idea of where we left off and what kind of decisions we made.

Later, we cleaned up shop, in a very literal sense. We uncovered our work table under the mountain of papers and random electronics pieces, and I wiped down every charcoal-coated surface of the Epilog laser cutter. I also discovered on the table 4 individual personal projects that I had started and not finished. Now that SEED is over, I might be able to finish these.

Might.

 

 

 

Personal Project #4: Strandbeest Walker. Current status: small-scale prototype completed. Awaiting scale-up to human-sized mechanical monster.