[ARCHIVED] A Master's student embarks on the long journey to discover her place in the engineering world -- and beyond.
CAKEBOT: Demo Day
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Demo Day was a huge success! The night before, Griffin and I were able to see the final product and discuss what to work on/test for a brief moment, and I was able to get there before the scheduled presentation to clean up a previous team's remnants and prep our own product. Griffin and I were able to test a spiral design on a few sheets of paper on top of our dummy cake -- and it looked beautiful as onlookers watched and Griffin videotaped a portion. Unfortunately, we were unable to setup the limit switches properly as I would have liked to do so. Though, the positioning system of our polar-coordinate-based rotating platform worked so well that it did not matter as much as I was worried it would. Cassie and Emily then walked in with our final, pre-frosted chocolate cake for the demonstration.
While they went on to watch others demonstration, I decided to create and edit a short promo/trailer video of our Cakebot to add into the presentation that would happen in 15 minutes. (Cue: "Superstar video editing skills") I took pictures and videos that I had saved into my Google+ photos and the team Google Drive folder for this (approx.) two-minute video. While doing so, Griffin began a GUI program to write "POE" -- which actually turned out, unexpectedly, mirrored and a little lop-sided due to the program running on polar coordinates (not Cartesian coordinates which are better for straight lines). He started another program to create a top and bottom border around the cake. Regardless, it wrapped up its design during our demonstration and, thankfully, I showed my video to show our audience that we can indeed create a beautifully designed, elegant cake for private use with polar-based designs. Our audience was very impressed with our mechanism and ability to create such a contraption -- and, if I do say so myself, complimented us on our video. Overall, the team was incredibly pleased with the outcome of the project as we served the cake to others at the end of Demo Day and, although I was unable to attend the Olin Expo the next day, Griffin and Cassie were able to fully decorate and serve two cakes to the public audience. This course was very difficult -- I will not kid myself -- but, nonetheless, worth all of it. I'm excited for my next Olin course, User-Oriented Collaborative Design. Watch the exciting video (below) and check out our final website for full information on the Cakebot design and team!
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