This week, City Walls welcomes their 6th team member, Dustin Hux, Computer Science major. The team was missing someone with the coding background, so he looks forward to bringing everything he knows to complete the wide backgrounds of experience that our team currently had. He is most excited about the possibility of our work reaching people on a global scale and potentially being able to travel to Colombia!
“How was your day?” Sarah asked new teammate Dustin Hux.
Matthew Truitte practices flying our team’s drone.
“It’s amazing now!” Dustin exclaimed as he picked up a S’more. The City Walls team knows how to do a meeting – with lots of snacks.
The City Walls team met with a challenge to overcome – they knew major revisions would be necessary to their original project plan. From their first brainstorm to the proposal created this week, the team has drastically overhauled their concept of the way the technical needs of this project should be addressed. The advice given to the team about technical functioning, plus the realization that many comparable resources would already be available to the team for use made the team realize that a new course of action would improve the speed, quality, and cost of the project. The team finally decided to 3D model the wall using a go-pro camera, rather than a laser scanner.
City Walls is proud of their work as they close out their group meeting. Left to Right: Caoihme, Dustin, Matt, and Nick [unpictured: Sarah].
“I was researching online today,” Nick added, “and I found this great program called DroneDeploy.” As a physics major, Nick’s expertise contributes heavily to this portion of the planning process. Additionally, his experience building and flying drones makes him an essential contributor to the project.
The team responded with enthusiasm to the idea and will use this program to process their pictures into a model for 3D printing. By attaching the camera to the belly of the drone, the team can do several fly-overs to capture a series of images from many viewpoints. City Walls will then 3D print these models and scan to test accuracy of results.
“We’re going to need doubles of everything,” Caiohme advised, “especially landing gear.” The team agreed.
The team decided to plot flight courses using Mission Planner, a program that launches from a computer and serves as ground control. This will allow the drone to be flown on its own so the team can focus on issues like image quality. Upon receiving the model from DroneDeploy, the team will create a precise 3D printed model. Using a 3D scanner, the team can then test the accuracy of their results.
“So what is our goal for Wednesday, and how do we need to prepare for that?” Sarah prompted. Sarah contributes to the project by facilitating group communication.
The team wants to have the parts of the drone mostly assembled by Wednesday and will set a date to test the process on a landmark nearby. City Walls knows there will be hiccups, so as Matt observed, “the sooner we can start practicing, the sooner we can work out whatever problems come up.”
Our Sponsors
