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Folding Boat Design for children using a Graphical User Interface and a Robot Compiler.
## Goals (Deliverables):
Have a child, around the age of 5, design a boat on the Graphical User Interface (GUI) built, print the boat out, assemble the boat by folding and cutting it, and finally drive the boat on a body of water.
Translating kindergarteners’ creative expressions into engineering specifications to design paper boats.
## Goals (Deliverables):
- Write an experimental procedure that measures usable/successful GUIs for a 5 year old to interact with
- Create a GUI that is accessible/usable to a 5 year old
- Integrate the Robot Compiler (RoCo) onto the GUI
- Determine what makes a GUI accessible/usable to a 5 year old by reviewing literature
- Plan presentation of GUIs to a 5 year old based on my experimental procedure
- Use data collection from meeting to narrow down usable/accessible GUIs
- Plan presentation of narrowed down GUIs to 5 year old based on my experimental procedure (refine experiemental procedure?)
- Use data collection from meeting to choose one GUI that was the most usable/accessible to a 5 year old
- Determine best GUI framework to create accessible GUI
- Become familiar with the RoCo documentation
- Design a protype (foldable boat with my specifications using the Graphical User Interface we create to… ) that can be designed with the GUI, get a file from RoCo, print the designed boat, cut it and fold it, add the electrical components and use the software to get the boat to run
- create a system (GUI) that (what does it mean for a GUI to be accessible adn usable to children?)
- Create graphical user interface that young children, the target age being 5 years old, can easily use without any formal or informal engineering training to create a foldable boat to their specifications.
- We want a 5 year old to be able to design the boat, print it out, and use scissors to cut and fold the boat they created.
- A foldable boat is complete when its electrical, mechanial, and software components have been chosen, fabricated, and assembled.
## Questions
When young children are given the task to build a foldable boat to their specifications, can they do it given the graphical user interface we build? What does their thought process look like when designing the foldable boat? (How and why do they design their boat the way they do?) Will our graphical user interface (GUI) be easy to use without having skills learned by engineers? Can this project: the GUI, the foldable boat, and the median be created and replicated easily, with little cost, and little to no resources?
### What concrete contributions will you accomplish for a successful project? How do you define and evaluate "success"?
### What Specific Characteristics must the boat have for you to call it optimized? For children to be able to replicate?
- must float above water
- water cannot seep into holes
- boat moves at a steady pace
- boat moves forwards and backwards
- boat turns southwest, west, northwest, north, northeast, east, and southeast
### What about letting the children personalize/cutomize their design?
Start by giving children the ability to change the height, width, length, and number of wheels of and on the boat. Most likely we will begin with one design and then branch out from there.
But with the addition or subtraction of a wheel, we start to run into obstacles for multiple reasons.
1) more wheel = more servos (+ wheels = + servos)
2) the software component that controls the electrical and mechanical components of the boat was written for 2 wheels
3) more weight added, by the wheels and servos, to the boat means the boat will be slow and could sink
******* as of right now we will limit wheel addition and subtraction, due to these initial concerns