Blowing the Whistle

Leave a Comment / ethics and sustainability /

With autonomous vehicles being more and more common it is more important now more than ever to consider the ethical implications of this. The IET has also noticed this and therefore has put out a set of rules of conduct that it expects its members to adhere to which includes guidance on whistleblowing. In the scenario where an autonomous vehicle might kill a civilian it is my duty as well as my team’s duty as IET engineers to whistle-blow it and to raise our concerns about the danger that it could pose.  The company should react swiftly and openly to rectify the issue and to prevent any further danger or damage to occur.

If Team Foxtrot knew that an autonomous vehicle would kill a pedestrian, then we would 100% whistle blow even to the detriment of our position within the company as keeping people safe and healthy is the most important part of being an engineer.

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Sustainability – Component and overhead costing

Leave a Comment / engineering in society, ethics and sustainability /

The full cost breakdown of components used in the Micro Mouse project amounts to £198.56. This includes all the components and materials such as Veroboard that we needed for prototyping. The most expensive item we used was the Raspberry pi Pico and the adjoining board as this cost £55.65 with delivery in 10 days, which made up a quarter of the overall expense for the project.

Another cost that wasn’t included in the above total was the overhead cost for the lab use and the academics that we had help from. Basing the costing on minimum wage we expected the lab technicians and academics to be paid £1372.80. I came to this cost as the project took roughly 20 weeks to complete, with 120 hours of labour equating to 6 hours per week. Of course this is the base minimum they would be paid and for their hard work I would hope it is higher.

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EDI statement from Ethan

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Ethan Hipwell

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) are extremely important in a group work project as people from different ethnicities and backgrounds bring new and interesting ways to think about a solution to a problem. Within our team for the Micro-mouse project, we have had a lot of diversity, as our team includes people from different ethnic backgrounds and genders. I think this allowed us to work well as a team as each of us had a different solution to problems when doing the Microhouse that other people may not have thought of. Also having an inclusive group meant no one felt left out so everyone in the group was motivated leading to a higher productivity.

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April Blog

Leave a Comment / Ethan's Blog /

This month we completed the physical micromouse assessments at Gregynog Hall. The mouse worked well apart from a few hiccups that we had such as one of the pins we were using for the screen broke. It was a brilliant experience to have and one that I was very glad to be a part of and to experience. Also this month I did some work on the website as well as putting together the presentation that we used at Gregynog.

In the coming month the main job will be to complete the website as well as writing the blog posts on sustainability, Autonomous vehicles and the benefit of Diversity, Equality and inclusion

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March Blog

Leave a Comment / Dara's Blogs /

We are getting close to the end of the project and after coding for the micromouse to follow obstacle avoidance and a white line . We noticed the micromouse was still not moving as planned so we had to a number of testing for the infrared sensors and for the input signals as well, there was a lot of soldering and re-soldering on the PCB, the infrared sensors and the white line circuit. It did take a while to find the error as there were many little errors on the PCB, the signals on the board for the motor and the sensors, but we were able to get them fixed luckily with the help of our technicians and Dr Timothy Davies. Also this month we finished the solidworks for our shell and we sent it for printing with the 3d machine. We are kind of in a rush to complete the micromouse as we want it to be good at combat and we are yet to conclude our special feature, so hopefully we finish it all before the trip to Greygnog. See you next month, Thanks for reading

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March Blog

Leave a Comment / Ethan's Blog /

For a majority of this month I worked on the SOLIDWORKS design. This has been challenging to do as I have struggled with the software and have been watching a lot of videos and tutorials to help. Although it has been difficult I have enjoyed the challenge of working with the software. I am now going to be working on the presentation and general improvements to the documentation we have. Also this month the team has done a lot of troubleshooting and have managed to get the white line following and obstacle avoidance working well. We still have the combat and special feature to complete which are our targets for the next month and we hope to have them all finished by the time we get to Gregynog.

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February Blog

Leave a Comment / Andrew's Blogs /

During the end of January and the entirety of February, I programmed and installed the LDRs on the front and rear end of the micro mouse. Dara and Ethan made the circuits that connect to the micro mouse. The sensors are working mostly to normal, where some calculations need to be made to detect the white lines accordingly. Also, I was able to implement the basic program for the micro mouse’s combat mode, where it is able to stay within the combat region and attack endlessly. For the following month, I will be finishing the combat mode on the micro mouse while doing our special feature.

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Line Following

Leave a Comment / public documents /

Part of the goals for our micromouse is that it must be capable of following a rectangular track consisting of a 50mm white line on a black background. We used the white LEDs on our micromouse to direct the movement around the edge. The LED’s were arranged in a triangle shape with two LEDs on the front and one LED at the back to detect at every location including the back.

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Dara’s February Blog

Leave a Comment / Dara's Blogs /

We finished exams last month and we had a short break as well for New Years and Christmas so when we got back for the break, we had our PCBs printed and handed out to us, so Ethan started on it and did a good job soldering. I was giving a role of testing the circuit, and I noticed that the infrared circuit was not working on the PCB as planned so I had to desolder and resolder a few components like the lights. Andrew and I worked on the white light following as well and there were few protypes that ended up being completed and soldered by Ethan, because this month has been quite busy, there weren’t many updates on the website as I would have liked, as we were kind of short staffed. One of our Key members Rhys had to leave due to some unforeseen circumstances, so we all had to chip in to cover up for each other in one way or another. We are also getting close to the end of our micromouse because we have started the design of our shell, more details about the shell will be on the website, I was able to design the tail of the shell, as we are thinking of having a fox shell literally like our name lol. We are also getting our special feature stated soon as we found the components we wanted on amazon.

I think we have done a great job this month, considering so many discrepancies like being a team of 3 all of a sudden, I’ll see you all next month.

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