Significant Risks and Contingency Plans
The most significant risks right now all involve the capabilities of the drone. Right now, it is crucial that the drone that we manage to obtain is most suitable for our project, as it may not be monetarily possible to be able to purchase another one. Having the most apt drone for our situation will make everything moving forward much easier (and possible). We are investigating many possible types of drones and their capabilities, and have many contingency plans for if we cannot find the perfect drone. These plans include shifting the purpose of our project, or coming up with different methods around whatever the drone lacks (for example, if the drone is unable to carry much weight, then an aid package may not be the best approach, in which case we adapt towards a laser pointer). In addition, due to our testing being done on campus, we will also be looking into getting a license this week for our drone if necessary.
System Changes
Depending on which drone we are able to obtain in the end, there are foreseeable system changes. Also, Prof. Kim suggests we take on a Search and Point project instead of a Search and Aid project. Should we end up switching to this, it would require many changes on all aspects – our use case and requirements would differ entirely, and our communication with the drone would need to include laser pointer controlling. Speaking of which, Prof. Kim also suggested we get a drone with an API, which would allow us to avoid having to build the drone-controller controller (and make controlling the drone a lot easier overall). These are things that are currently a work-in-progress, and should be updated more in detail in the next status report.
Other Updates
There have been no schedule changes nor other updates.