Date:	1/8/2009
Student:	Taylor Lusk
TAs:	Mike Pridgen
	Thomas Vermeer
Instructors:	Dr. A. Antonio Arroyo
	Dr. Eric M. Schwartz

University of Florida

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

EEL 5666

Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory

Weekly Report 1

This week was spent mostly brainstorming ideas for my robot. As an Aerospace guy I initially thought of making a flying machine but decided against that because I did not think it would make for a good project for this class. I was having a little trouble coming up with something good so I as a backup I may look at past terms of this class and find an idea I like that I think I can do better. Next I was talking to my friend who is in the class also. We decided it would be fun and challenging to do a joint venture and make a pair of robots that fought each other. The initial idea is to mount paintball guns on them. We found a video on YouTube of a remote-controlled vehicle very similar to our idea. Ours would be able to move to find cover and be able to target and shoot each other. This has some inherent safety issues so we will be running this idea by an instructor soon.

The other topic this week was picking out a processor board. I do not think I would gain much by shopping around since I do not have enough experience to know what I am looking for. I have decided almost for sure to buy a board from the TAs. Their sales pitch was pretty good on Tuesday and the improvements they have made over the original MAVRIC board appear to be worthwhile.