“If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”
Steve Jobs
Our best ideas come from the most epic failures. Design is never success after success; we see failure as an opportunity for success. Our most recent “failure” has been the discovery of an issue we might encounter with dropping darts, which was our idea in our last prototype. After some discussion, we’ve come up with new ideas. We are currently considering using ball bearings instead. They are easily-accessible and lightweight, but impactful. We hope to experiment with this new prototype soon.
We’ve discovered that failure of our prototypes will lead to success. It will indicate aspects of the drone we need to redefine and reveal problems that we failed to initially identify. For instance, we will discover how weight may be shifted on the drone as a ball is released into the ground to detonate the landmines or how our drone may be affected by the weather. To tackle one issue we’ve identified — short battery life — we have decided to include a new battery in each magazine. Additional problems we may encounter include methods to maintain the steadiness of the drone and whether the weight of the balls will be enough for detonation. Regardless of these “failures,” we’re confident that each one will lead us to new questions and discoveries.
We have gone through many ideas in the past six weeks, none of which we consider failures. In coming up with our designs, we’ve tried to think of possible failures we might encounter. And thinking this way has allowed us to ensure our final design will prevail.
By Premal Patel, Urvi Patel, Everett Pitts, Alexa Senio, and Jeffrey Small