Project GOTChA chart
This quad chart gives a snapshot of the planned activities for the term, at a high level. This information is presented here in the form of a GOTChA chart.
Goals
- Build an integrated team of Caltech Undergraduates, Graduates, and JPL Engineers that can win the DARPA SubTerranean Challenge
- Complete the design development phase of the Solar Decathlon competition and submit design documents on time
- Evaluate and explore options for providing some technology sizzle in the system design
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Technical Challenges
- Bring 20+ new Caltech students from diverse backgrounds and skill levels up to speed quickly
- Integration of JPL and Caltech activities (people, goals, schedule, deliverables)
- Many existing baseline designs are not very developed; need more work and re-validation
- Some subsystems have no baseline design
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Objectives
- Assign students to subsystems and teams, with linkages between teams with overlapping functionality or interfaces
- For subsystems with existing baseline designs:
- Revalidate the baseline design computations and verify that baseline can achieve maximum points for relevant competition(s)
- Communicate and agree on specifications and choices with IPT and JPL teams
- Perform model-based analysis of system performance in a form that can be used for trade-off studies
- Document the baseline design in a manner that is compatible with design development phase deliverable
- Evaluate technology options that can be incorporated into our design and perform cost analysis for each
- For subsystems without existing baseline designs:
- Analyze options design with performance, cost, electrical load, thermal load estimates
- Establish a baseline design that can achieve maximum points for relevant competition(s), in agreement with IPT and JPL teams
- Document the baseline design in a manner that is compatible with design development phase deliverable
- Develop and maintain system-level cost and energy budgets and use these to verify ability to maximize points on engineering-driven competitions
- Provide a design capable of full capability (max points)
- Provide a design capable of 90% max points on worst case
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Approach
- Analyze, document, and cost a baseline solution
- Schedule planning event with Caltech + JPL to help people meet each other and align goals, milestones and schedule
- Make use of the project wikis, websites, Slack, Git, etc. as a mechanism to document and enhance team communication
- Identify individual students who will be responsible for insuring good cross-project integration between appropriate groups
- Develop analytical or computational models demonstrating that specifications can be met
- Milestones
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