Friday, April 29, 2005
One to remember
Well well well...with the completion of ME3262 Industrial Metrology on 28 Apr, 1900 hrs, yet another semester has gone by. Time to look back and reflect.
If there’s only one thing that I’d remember from this semester, it would definitely have to be ME3102 Mechanical Systems Design. It started off in the previous semester as ME3101, where we designed an autonomous robot to pick up foam balls and shoot at a target. This was only the design phase, and culminated in a presentation and report. In ME3102, we did the fabrication and had the competition to see whose robot could shoot the most balls.
It all went along fine and dandy in the beginning, but in the run-up to the competition we were feverishly testing our robot and tweaking it here and there. Often we’d go down to the arena after lessons, test till the next morning, go for lessons, go back and change/sleep/bathe and by dinner time we were back again. The week before the competition felt like one really long 100hr day, and we were just running on adrenaline and caffeine.
No one really complained though, because we all felt that we had something worth suffering for. Although we were definitely not in the running for the top prize, we still felt that at least we had something to be proud of come competition day. Hours were spent, brains were cracked, swear words were uttered (from me at least), coffee was gulped (me again) and sleeplessness was endured, not because we had to but because we wanted to. There was a pure, unadulterated desire to have our robot be the best it could be, and it was felt all round.
As for how the competition went, I’ll just quote from this learning journal that I submitted for MNO2311 Leadership in Organisations:
“Our robot was not able to participate in the competition due to major component failures, just minutes before it was due to start. Connecting a new battery with the wrong polarity caused the voltage regulator, microprocessor and relays to blow and essentially ruled out any chance of participation, despite intensive efforts to troubleshoot.
Lesson 1 : A team takes collective responsibility for its actions and results.
It was a bitter disappointment to have many man-hours of hard work literally go up in smoke, but in all honesty I cannot pinpoint anyone for blame as we all put in tremendous effort and made many personal sacrifices for this project. Our group leader was the one who made the critical error, but to pin the blame on one person would be to miss the point that we are all responsible for the projects’ success and to miss the lesson in teamwork.
Lesson 2 : Maintain emotional control during a crisis.
During the highly distressing period of trouble-shooting under severe time constraints, never was there any accusation or outright show of frustration. Everyone maintained a positive attitude as the turn of events helped buy us more time for trouble-shooting. Hope was constantly maintained and encouragement flowed within the group to keep spirits up even as the examiner kept announcing for us to present our robot. Right till the end, we still believed we had a fighting chance to fix it in time and make it for the competition. This unexpected show of fighting spirit can be attributed to each member’s show of calm and display of controlled urgency instead of anxiety or panic.
Lesson 3 : Genuine mistakes happen and require empathy.
For us, the disappointment was directed at the mistake rather than the person, and recognizing that the one who made it had consistently given of his best for the team demonstrates empathy. There is still the rest of the project to go (presentations, reports and interviews) and to blame him now would be to destroy his morale for the rest of the module.
In spite of the above circumstances, I believe that we can overcome our failure in the competition (20% of the overall grade) to score in the other CA components and achieve a decent grade. Other teams have commented on the ingenuity of our design and expressed genuine sympathy for our plight, and seeing the qualities of my group members shown so far gives me this confidence.”
It has been a huge learning experience for me, and I hope all of you reading this can take something home from it too.
Woooooaaaaahhhhhh sweet child o' mine....
Posted by Hello
If there’s only one thing that I’d remember from this semester, it would definitely have to be ME3102 Mechanical Systems Design. It started off in the previous semester as ME3101, where we designed an autonomous robot to pick up foam balls and shoot at a target. This was only the design phase, and culminated in a presentation and report. In ME3102, we did the fabrication and had the competition to see whose robot could shoot the most balls.
It all went along fine and dandy in the beginning, but in the run-up to the competition we were feverishly testing our robot and tweaking it here and there. Often we’d go down to the arena after lessons, test till the next morning, go for lessons, go back and change/sleep/bathe and by dinner time we were back again. The week before the competition felt like one really long 100hr day, and we were just running on adrenaline and caffeine.
No one really complained though, because we all felt that we had something worth suffering for. Although we were definitely not in the running for the top prize, we still felt that at least we had something to be proud of come competition day. Hours were spent, brains were cracked, swear words were uttered (from me at least), coffee was gulped (me again) and sleeplessness was endured, not because we had to but because we wanted to. There was a pure, unadulterated desire to have our robot be the best it could be, and it was felt all round.
As for how the competition went, I’ll just quote from this learning journal that I submitted for MNO2311 Leadership in Organisations:
“Our robot was not able to participate in the competition due to major component failures, just minutes before it was due to start. Connecting a new battery with the wrong polarity caused the voltage regulator, microprocessor and relays to blow and essentially ruled out any chance of participation, despite intensive efforts to troubleshoot.
Lesson 1 : A team takes collective responsibility for its actions and results.
It was a bitter disappointment to have many man-hours of hard work literally go up in smoke, but in all honesty I cannot pinpoint anyone for blame as we all put in tremendous effort and made many personal sacrifices for this project. Our group leader was the one who made the critical error, but to pin the blame on one person would be to miss the point that we are all responsible for the projects’ success and to miss the lesson in teamwork.
Lesson 2 : Maintain emotional control during a crisis.
During the highly distressing period of trouble-shooting under severe time constraints, never was there any accusation or outright show of frustration. Everyone maintained a positive attitude as the turn of events helped buy us more time for trouble-shooting. Hope was constantly maintained and encouragement flowed within the group to keep spirits up even as the examiner kept announcing for us to present our robot. Right till the end, we still believed we had a fighting chance to fix it in time and make it for the competition. This unexpected show of fighting spirit can be attributed to each member’s show of calm and display of controlled urgency instead of anxiety or panic.
Lesson 3 : Genuine mistakes happen and require empathy.
For us, the disappointment was directed at the mistake rather than the person, and recognizing that the one who made it had consistently given of his best for the team demonstrates empathy. There is still the rest of the project to go (presentations, reports and interviews) and to blame him now would be to destroy his morale for the rest of the module.
In spite of the above circumstances, I believe that we can overcome our failure in the competition (20% of the overall grade) to score in the other CA components and achieve a decent grade. Other teams have commented on the ingenuity of our design and expressed genuine sympathy for our plight, and seeing the qualities of my group members shown so far gives me this confidence.”
It has been a huge learning experience for me, and I hope all of you reading this can take something home from it too.
Woooooaaaaahhhhhh sweet child o' mine....
Posted by Hello
# posted by BloozeGit @ 1:31 am 
