APPROACH TO MISSION CONCEPT REVIEW

The city of Columbus has asked the team to help with the “Smart City” mission. The Baker International Company was assigned to transport from Linden to Easton. Because of the highway I-71, “Linden is cut off from basic services and centers of employment including healthcare, grocery stores, and banking” [1]. As specified by the MCR Deliverables, the goals of Columbus are “improving safety, enhancing mobility, enhancing ladders of opportunity, and addressing climate change.” To help manage the research, development, and testing of our AEV, our team has decided to create various roles for each team member. Paige and Miho are co-heads of documentation, Rachel is head of labs and R&D, and Tatum is head of the website. Each person is responsible for informing other team members about the assignments for their respective area and making sure everything is complete before the assignment due date. Although each member has their own role, all members will follow the agreed upon schedule for the semester and help with overall programming.

The first few weeks of the semester will be spent conducting preliminary research and development for the design of our AEV. Each team member will participate in various exercises in topics such as programming basics, external sensors, data extraction, design thinking, and screening and scoring. With the team members informed on how the Advance Energy Vehicle works, the goal of improve safety during testing and in our final design will be met. Every week, team members will answer questions about our preliminary research and brainstorm ideas of how to create a unique AEV design that meets all project requirements. Our team is brainstorming to create an AEV that is shaped like a bird or a plane to increase mobility. Next, we will complete our first progress report to document our AEV knowledge so far and present our grant proposal. The grant proposal will determine how much funding our team has to implement our AEV. The weeks following the grant proposal will be advanced research and design time. During these weeks, our team will analyze our brainstorming ideas, decide on an AEV design, research how this design works through testing, and compare our test results to other teams during a committee meeting.  During the second round of advanced research and design, we will complete our second progress report and website update. We will also brainstorm ways to improve our previous design, decide on the improvements to make, research how the improvements impact the AEV through testing, and compare our results during our R&D oral presentation. The final round of research and development will focus on making final improvements to our AEV design, testing the effect of the improvements, and preparing for our final presentation. Once we have completed all of the research and development, we will prepare for our final progress report, oral presentation, performance test, website, and critical design review. With the AEV being environmentally safe, it addresses the goal of addressing climate change and will not give off toxic emissions. As for enhancing ladders of opportunity, the transportation benefit for Linden will increase the availability of jobs, hospitals, and shopping.

Regardless of what task we are completing each week,  our team will constantly be working towards creating a final AEV that maximizes efficiency but minimizes travel time, cost, and energy consumption for Columbus . The preliminary research and development will allow us to learn more about various components of the AEV and how each component can be used to improve the overall AEV design. The advanced research and development will allow us to choose an AEV design, repeatedly test its performance, and make any improvements that we see fit. The documentation, website updates, committee meetings, and presentations will help our team to reflect on our AEV design decisions and learn from other teams’ research. By keeping these goals in mind and following the project schedule, Group A will be able to create an outstanding AEV for the Smart City Columbus Grant Staff.

All information in this approach is from citation [1].