The 2010 Oregon State University Mars Rover Team

2010 Design Guide

The team is comprised of students in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Software Engineering, and Bio Engineering. This year a very comprehensive method of documenting design progress was applied to make the design process more efficient and more effective. In Utah, at the end of last year's competition, a team meeting was held to discuss all aspects of the project: what worked well, what didn't work well, and what needs to be changed for the following year. Everything that was brought up was recorded and now serves as a design guide for the 2010 Mars Rover. This document has been extraordinarily effective, as it has forced us to address every problem encountered on the 2009 Mars Rover, many of which are related to system reliability.

Internal Project Website

To keep the team organized during the design phase, a webpage was created with all design categories accessible and easily editable by any member on the team. Each category features detailed explanations along with pictures (i.e. solid models, circuit schematics, user interfaces, part drawings, etc) to allow other team members to keep up to date with the progress. In addition to design categories, a bill of material and budget are also kept, making the design of the Mars Rover a very transparent process. The team webpage is continuously updated by all the team members and serves as a thorough design record for quick and easy reference at any time.

Weekly Meeting

In addition to keeping a webpage, each week the entire team meets to discuss progress and concerns within each design category. A projector is used to display the most up-to-date solid model of the rover for the whole team to look at while discussing each particular design. Keeping all team members up to date with an accurate 3D representation of the rover allows for design conflicts and concerns to be addressed and discussed early on, before they become a problem. These meetings have proven invaluable in keeping the various disciplines working together.

The design guide, the webpage, and the meetings have all combined to create an extremely effective inter-disciplinary 2010 Mars Rover design team.

The 2010 OSURC Rover Team