Optional Draft Design Report
Due: Thursday, October 14, 4:30 p.m.
There are three goals of the optional draft-report submission:
- To encourage you to document your design alternatives and
decisions as you work on your robot project.
- To encourage you to start writing your design report early.
- To give you directed feedback as to whether you are providing the
right information in your report, at the right level of detail.
Although your robot program is not due until next month,
your
subteam can begin documenting what you know about the problems that
your
subteam is trying to solve. By the fifth week of the term, your
subteam should have understood the problems, done some preliminary
analysis, and be in a position to outline
the report and to discuss one or two of the design decisions you have
made so far. As with the design report, your subteam
will submit one draft report.
The draft report will be marked, and must contain
the following items:
- A draft of the letter of submittal (see suggestions
for letter of submittal from GEN E 167)
- A draft of the table of contents, list of figures, and
list of tables
- A draft of the introduction
- A references section, which includes at least one citation
(which must be referred to somewhere in the report)
- An outline of the body
- A fleshed out description of an experiment you have run
(including at least one table of data) OR fleshed out descriptions of
two design decisions and their rationales
In weeks 3 through 7, you will be given time during the lab hours to
work on your robot project
and on your design report. Some work outside the lab
will also be required. The
draft report is due by Thursday,
Oct. 14, at 4:30p.m. Place it in the SE 101 submission box
located outside of the WEEF lab.
The TAs will
give feedback on formatting for figures, graphs, tables, references,
front
matter, and body, as well as any additional material you submit.
The draft introduction in the interim report will also allow the TAs to
evaluate whether you have properly understood the assignment. For
advice on citing references, see Dupré Section 103,
which you should read thoroughly.
Between the time when the draft report is due and the time when the
final report is due, your subteam will
- Complete
the design, analysis, and implementation of its contributions to the
team's LegoTracker project
- Integrate its code with the code being developed by the other
subteams in your
team
- Revise material in the draft report, based on feedback from the
TAs
- Complete the body of the design report, adding any missing
sections, figures, and tables, as appropriate
The final report is due by Monday, November 15, at 4:30pm.
Place the final report in the SE 101 submission box located outside of
the WEEF lab.
If you do not submit a draft report, then your design-report mark
will be 40% of your course grade. If you do submit a draft
report, then the draft report will be worth 10% and the final report
will be worth 30% of your course grade -- unless your final-report mark
is better than your draft-report mark, in which case we will reweight
this marking scheme, so that your design-report mark will be 40% of
your course grade.