Week #2

During Week 2, the group acquired a new member. Group 6 is now a 4 person group, and a challenge arose. What would each person do? The group decided to split up the tasks, and this benefited everyone because each membrer brought something new to the table. The next task was to finally purchasing the melodica. Before we could purchase it a budget was made for it, and the group came to the conclusion that it had to be less than $20. After careful search on the internet, a melodic costing  only $16.99 was found on Amazon. This was under budget, and the instrument came with a holder for it, and two different types of air tubes. This was economically beneficial, since everything that is needed did not have to be personally purchased. For a robot to play this instrument a physical structure needed to be built, so the group acquired NXT robot pieces. Over the next week a few of the group members started to create an initial design of the robot to play the melodica, even though they did not know the exact dimensions of the melodica.

Week #1

For this first week of lab, students focused on selecting group members and deciding which instruments the group would design a robot to play. At first the group was going to consist of five members. However, after this was decided, students were told that there could only be three members in a group. Thus, five students decided to find another person to join them in order to have two groups of three. After finding the sixth person, the students evaluated each other’s skills, such as who is good at programming or who is good at building. From that information, the students split up into two groups. Each group will have one programmer and two builders. After deciding upon the group members, students chose the instrument to play. This group, Group 6, wanted to play awind type of instrument. The two most logical instruments were an ocarina or a melodica. In the end, Group 6 chose a melodica since its sounds would be easier to emit.