Our Hovercraft inflated with nothing on it certainly could look like a vehicle that one may “ride”, but we believe we could have done several things differently. Such as: using a lighter material instead of plywood for the base and the nailed down square we had in the middle of the tarp, a more durable tarp, and a better sealant for the tarp. A cordless leaf blower would have also let us improve our maneuverability. There are some ideas in change of design that we have talked about completing soon. The first being the location of the hole in the plywood. In our first design, the hole and blower location were located towards the front of the craft. Even though we could not tell if this influenced the inflation of the tarp, we believe moving it to the middle may more evenly distribute the air. The only thing that prevented us from doing that at first is the wooden design we created to force the air to the side.

The second design element I believe we could have changed were the actual holes we created. The holes ended up being penciled sized (we stabbed pencils in the tarp to create them), after we used much smaller holes causing the rupture in our seal. We believe that the holes needed to be as close to the center as possible and no where near the edges. We most likely had holes to close to the edge of the blown up tarp that instead of forcing air on the ground when someone sat on it, it forced the air to blow out to the side and almost deflate. And in future testing we wish to use something like a trash bag or a thicker and more durable, but still near friction-less, tarp.

Regardless, we were sadly affected by Covid-19 and we lost access to working together and testing in gyms. Also, with an increased budget we could have been able to purchase higher end materials to help us construct. I do not want to label this project as a failure, but more as a fun design process that did not reach our goals. We wished to work on it during the summer going into our third year, but our living locations proved to not be feasible enough. Our current Hovercraft is still located at OSU and most likely will be while we enter our Fall semester. Even though the project has come to an end, my group and I will always have the Hovercraft and I am positive that we will revisit and constantly wish to improve upon what we have so far. Our end goal has now changed from something that can support a human, to something that we can show to job recruiters/other peers and be proud of that we took the time to really use our major to create something while being outside the box.