Sections

The outline of a report is roughly as follows:

• Introduction: This section introduces the reader to a micromouse, then introduces the reader to your particular micromouse.
  • General Micromouse: Describe the rules that affect how a micromouse is designed. What is considered a good design?
  • Your mouse: Do not provide details here. Indicate the overall design objectives that your team agrees on.
• Design: This section describes how you design the original micromouse. Do not write down the design of the finished product, you will have another section to do that.
  • Design Specification: What are the specifications of the original design? Do not write down the specifications of the finished product here. Provide reasons for each design specification.
    • mass
    • top speed
    • width of body
    • length of body
    • linear resolution
    • turn resolution
    • sensor sensitivity (minimum skew and offset error detected)
    • energy requirement
    • motor type
  • Design Decisions: The previous section described what the micromouse should do, this section explains how you made decisions on selecting components. For each item, describe the alternatives you have found, and how you selected the particular one used in the design.
    • motor selection: Describe and explain the type (stepper versus DC), energy requirements (in Watts), resolution (for steppers), gearing (if any) and mounting method.
    • wheel selection: Describe the explain the size (diameter and width), materials and mounting method to the drive shaft.
    • energy system: Describe and explain the type (NiMH, NiCd or Li ion), energy storage (in Joules or mAH @ V), maximum internal resistance and discharge curve at the worst case discharge scenario of your micromouse.
    • sensors: Describe and explain the model you have chosen to use.
    • steering design: Describe and explain the type (differential versus steered).
• Experiments This section describes the process in which you confirm whether the parts you selected from the previou chapter work as expected. You need to describe the methods and results.
  • Sensors. How did you set up a test circuit to see if the sensors are of the proper sensitivity? How does pulsing the IrEDs at 1A affect the value of the pull-up resistors?
  • Motors. How did you test the motors, like the maximum noload speed? How did you determine and confirm the power consumption of these motors?
  • Batteries. How did you test the capacity of the batteries at the load of running the maze?
• Implementation The implementation is the process in which you make the product as designed. No design is perfect the first time, few are even correct the first time. In this section, you will discuss the implementation stage in terms of problems encountered, analysis of such problems and solutions to the problems. Since different groups encounter different problems, it is nearly impossible to describe the structure of this section. You may want to use a chronological order. For each problem, be sure to include the following:
  • Description of the problem. What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What was the difference between expectation and observation?
  • Analysis of the problem. What led to the problem? How did you experiment and deduce the source of the problem? How did you confirm your analysis?
  • Rectification of the problem. How did you solve the problem? Did you have multiple options to choose from? If so, why did you choose the one that you used?
• Retrospective Analysis Given all the problems you discovered and hopefully fixed in the previous section, how do you think things can be improved? For each improvement item, please include the following:
  • What the problem to be addressed?
  • How should the design itself be modified to address the problem?
  • Does the improvement impact other features? How about the cost?
• Summary The summary section is a section for you to recap the most important points of this project. Its structure is left open for each group to determine.