Team,

Just to recap the homework assignment for the week:

1. We need to become familiar with the engineering terms that are commonly used with robotics-type work. You will find the list of several terms and what they mean later on in this email.

2. Figure out which of the missions interests you that you would like to propose to the rest of the team. Be prepared to answer why you chose this. The actual research assignment is to come up with an important question relating to this mission and to design a robotic expedition to answer this question. There are examples in the Research Assignment handout that you received during today's meeting.

3. Each family has one or two pieces of the challenge set. Come up with a way to accomplish that particular challenge. If you have access to a robot, test your method several times to see if you have a robust design. You can present or demonstrate your design at the next meeting. Make sure you read the Planetary Report magazine that you took home. It gives you a good idea of what the challenges were for the various Mars expeditions.

A note about the equipment:

Last year's team auctioned off the robot and the challenge set to members of the group. The money was then evenly divided among the members of the group. This had the double effect of reducing the cost to all the team members and of reducing the cost to the buyer because, as a team member, he got some of his own money back. The robot would then go home with its buyer each week and the challenge set would become the property of its buyer at the end of the competitions. I'd like to propose that we do that again. The robot set (which includes the RCX controller, communication tower, and a little over 800 Lego pieces) would be considered one item and the challenge set (consisting of the mat and all the Lego creations on the mat) would be considered another item.

We could do the bidding via email. To make it easy, you could just hit the "reply to all" button and type in your bid. That way everyone would receive a notification of the bid. Anyone who wishes to bid higher could repeat the process. If there identical bids, the earlier bid takes precedence. If you wish to expand your Lego collection, this would be a good way to do it!

For example, if a team member bids $100 for the robot set, he would get back about $14 because he is a member of the team. This would make his cost about $86.00.

How about we start the bidding for the robot set at $75.00 and the challenge set at $20.00. Who will give the first bid?

Any questions/comments? give me a call or email...