AT&T Arduino Competition

Today, we participated in the AT&T Arduino Competition at the corporation's Midtown Atlanta headquarters, where more than twenty projects were presented, including ours. We presented the I.R.I.S. project as well as a  hovercraft we designed earlier in the year. The other projects ranged from a Smart House to an automated dog food dispenser. At the competition, we were forced to make a few last-minute additions, as our mathematical models did not work in a realistic situation. We added two more balloons to the model, simply tying them onto the frame. This provided more than enough lift, and we were able to lift off the ground. This was another learning experience, as we realized just how much the distribution of weight across the frame matters; the drone kept drifting to one side due to uneven distribution. Fortunately, we were ready when the judges came around to us, and demonstrated both I.R.I.S. and the hovercraft successfully to them.

After they finished, we all took a lunch break (pizza) and waited for the results. After about an hour or so, the judges returned and much to our surprise and delight, we took home the first place trophy!

Our hard work paid off, and we learned a lot. Throughout the process, we were constantly improving, and continued to do so right up to the competition. I felt like I learned a few core principles that I can apply to my future projects. One is to constantly test your designs. You don't want to wait until the last minute to make sure everything works as you planned. The next is to organize your systems. Without compartmentalization and organization, not only will your project look like a mess, but if something goes wrong with the wiring or some other mechanism, it will take you forever to determine what's causing it and where it's located. The final, and most important, is resilience. Our project constantly had problems and setbacks, and it would have been very easy for us to simply give up and drop the entire thing out of frustration. But we endured, and came out better for it.