Guidelines for Weekly Reports

The Weekly Reports provide the instructors a running commentary on your progress and an opportunity for you to provide us feedback about the course. We look for your comments on positive aspects of the laboratory, on problems you have encountered, on time spent, and for constructive comments on how we might improve the laboratory. You must write Weekly Reports in active voice, past tense, using the personal pronoun I where applicable. Place the heading, weekly report number, current date, your name, your TA's name, and your instructor's name as illustrated in the example below. The weekly report number should always be one less than the week number in the syllabus. Weekly reports are due every Thursday beginning with Thursday August 28, 2008.

Example Weekly Report

______________________________________________________________________________

Date: 8/28/08

Student Name: Stu Dent

TA : Mike Pridgen

Thomas Vermeer

Instructors: Dr. A. Antonio Arroyo

Dr. Eric M. Schwartz

University of Florida

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

EEL 5666

Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory

Weekly Report 1

I designed and assembled the robot platform and mounted the wheels, motors, and shaft encoders. I discovered a technique for gluing and clamping the model airplane plywood parts together which made the assembly easy. I would be happy to share the technique with the class. I prototyped, tested and debugged a shaft encoder circuit. The attached figure illustrates the circuit I designed. Other students may find the pulse counting technique I developed novel and useful. The circuit also has fewer parts than the one the TA showed me.

Commentary on the Laboratory (Optional)

The oscilloscope I used appeared to fail intermittently and the wire cutters I used did not cut well. I mentioned these problems to my TA. He said he would have the problems corrected. I worked 4 hours at home in addition to 6 hours in the laboratory to finish the week's objectives. A brief lecture on shaft encoder design would have helped me immensely. The motor wiring diagram passed out in class appears to have a connection error. The second figure shows what I believe to be the correct connections. The help and friendly atmosphere in the lab generated by the TAs and my classmates makes the laboratory exceptionally enjoyable.

______________________________________________________________________________