Needs focus on humans. They should be short, human-centered phrases.

• Revolve around people, their experiences, what they need, what they are having trouble with, etc.

• Short and broad

Fisher

1. The adept tanks are not robust (loses 40% every year)

2. It is difficult and expensive to find replacement parts

3. A scaled-down robot needs to be affordable (similar price range to previous models ($200-$400))

4. Having too many sensors can make the robot too complicated

5. Some sensor APIs aren’t approachable

6. Students want to work on a system that looks advanced

7. It takes too long for students to learn the platform (2 weeks)

   1. Includes robot, programming language, and APIs

Berry

8. It is difficult to provide examples when students use different IDEs

9. It is difficult to help students who use different methods for calling APIs

10. The current robots are no longer being produced

11. The motors are more precise than the encoders

12. There is no built in support for wireless communication, leading to many solutions

13. The cameras are unreliable

14. Modular platforms make it easier to adjust the course

Mitchell

15. In FRC, students can’t reimplement things to learn how they work

16. Bad quality components are time consuming and difficult to debug

17. Closed platform, restrictions on motors

18. The step between basics and more complicated features is too big

19. Most kits are meant for learning software, not electrical components

Katie

20. Need to set up the entire control system to run quick tests

21. Wants adding sensors to be straightforward

22. Too easy to break robots if a sensor comes unplugged

23. Had issues with wires coming unplugged on breadboard robot

Bryson

24. Things didn’t always work in mobile robotics

25. Difficult to set up

26. Didn’t have the computing power for SLAM on the robot

27. Robot price should be $750-$1000

28. FRC robots are too heavy

29. FRC robots are too large

Other notes

Fisher

• Want robust sensors

• Fisher definitions: Beginner (block programming), intermediate, advanced (Raspberry Pi) depends on how difficult it is to set things up

• Fisher wants advanced

• Line following sensor, distance sensor, gyro,

  • Students choose some sensors

• Convenient to code on the coding platform

• Python since it’s easier to learn and more common for learning programming

• Something that looks advanced

• Current robots are $200-$400

• Important to learn a new system, but it shouldn’t take two weeks

  • Maybe have some demos

  • Instructional videos

• Define intermediate/advanced in our documentation

Berry

• Goal: robust system with sensors and hardware that work (w/ APIs) so that students can use the software for robotics tasks

• Current robots aren’t being produced anymore

• The robot should provide IDE/features for integration since implementing features is complicated when everyone is choosing their own development environment

• Doesn’t want new robots, but likes adding/removing things with an existing platform

Mitchell

• Likes plugin abilities in VSCode

• FRC is good at teaching concepts

Katie

• Mindstorms are approachable (good)

  • Limited sensors

• Wants it to be straightforward to add sensors

• Something that checks sensors before running to not break things

  • Display sensor values on a computer

• Arduino platform has good documentation

• FRC electrical system is easy to wire

Bryson

• Has to work

• Articulated leg

• Sensors to detect the environment

  • Better to have a foundation for letting the users choose how to detect the environment

• Wireless communication for ease of use

• Education demos (PID)

• Smaller than a microwave

• One person should be able to pick it up

• Wheels should be able to get close the the shoulder axis

• Driving mode with wheels on the bottom of the head to not worry about balancing

• Jumping would be cool

• Simulation in ROS