Currently, the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project are scheduling and training/calibration time. With scheduling, there are many deliverables and many components we need to ensure can work together. This could definitely jeopardize the success of the project if we have underestimated the development time. the other risk is training/calibration time. This time includes training the model and also calibrating the PID controller may take time to make sure it is stable and functions properly. If we are not able to calibrate it properly it could put the rest of the project at risk. These risks are being managed by ensuring the components of the task that could take the most amount of time are being done first and we are all working together to make it easier to deal with hurdles or obstacles. Since the calibration is unique to our drone, it is not possible for us to get around this part of the drone. We have to make sure this part functions properly. With the AI training, our contingency plan is to use an even simpler target that will be easier to spot.
There were some major changes made to the design of the system this week. We switched from the KV260 to the KR260 board. This change was necessary because another team needed the vision board so we switched. This actually reduces our cost as we no longer have to buy the accessory kit for the vision board. Another change that we made was using a pre-made drone chassis instead of 3d printing one. This change was necessary because this drone chassis we are buying has much of the power distribution and design done for us already, with a strong frame made out of carbon fiber. This will be more durable and solve our power distribution problems that we would have run into before. This will incur a cost of 60 dollars, but since this is a necessary cost, it will be mitigated by saving money in other areas. The final change we are making is our use case. We are narrowing down our use case to just over a body of water to detect people that are lost-at-sea which will make the efficacy of our drone much better.
No updated schedule required, everything is on track.