Proposals

Proposals serves two purposes: To inform the officers and the club about the plans of each project and to help team leaders in their project planning. It is comprised of a description of the project objectives for the new year, a schedule, and a budget. Generally, the proposals are due to the officers by the beginning of the school year. Final budget amounts are then determined and announced in the subsequent weeks.

Preliminary Proposal

A preliminary proposal may be asked of the team leaders when the officers need information for planing purposes before the proposal deadline. These preliminary proposals are not binding and are strictly for pre-planning purposes.

Prior Results

A short description (one to two paragraphs) of what went right and what went wrong in the previous year. Serves as in introduction to the proposal.

Project Description

The project description is the heart of the proposal and contains the objectives, the milestones for reaching those objectives, the resources that will be needed, and any travel plans.

Objectives

The project's objectives should be carefully considered as they will guide the planning of the project. Clear, concise objectives help keep a team focused without pulling the development in too many directions at once. Abstract, far reaching objectives are discouraged as they are hard to fully satisfy and give the team no clear direction. The best objectives focus in on each aspect of the project, and provide detail about what the expectations, such as performance and ease of use, will be for those aspects. Finally, the objectives shouldn't enumerate specific tasks. There should be at least 1 primary objective and 2 secondary objectives. Secondary objectives are defined as something that if not met will not prevent the project from failing to compete.

Bad Examples:

1. "To be competitive relative to the current field" - Too broad and not clearly defined. There is no indication of what capabilities are considered competitive in the field and if a team needs to implement all of them.
2. "Fix the code for estimating position" - This sounds more like a bug fix or a to-do list than an objective.
3. "Design a manipulator for the science task" - While this is specific it really is just a re-hash of the competition objectives.

Good Examples:

1. "Gain a competitive advantage by building a rotary based weapon" - Like the above objective the goal of being competitive is clearly conveyed and in addition details are given as to what ways the team will be competitive. Note that the objective is specific enough that the type of weapon is given but general enough that further details are omitted. Also note that the team already at this point has an idea of what type of robot is going to be built instead of starting from a clean slate.
2. "Train new members by having them fix some of Glados's simpler problems" - This objective is more general and it achieves a much bigger goal in terms of training. A team leader should be careful in choosing this goal though, as it indicates that they will need to allocate time and resources to training, time that could be spent on new systems for Glados.
3. This one can go two ways:
   1. "Define the objectives for and build a manipulator for the science task" - Not the best objective but at least its this shows that there has been some thought on this objective.
   2. "Design a manipulator that penetrate six inches of earth for the science task and has minimal size and power requirements" - Much better. Everything is spelled out and the objectives for the manipulator, though general are given. One can use this objective to really guide a design.

Milestones

The milestones are a means of demonstrating progress to the officers, the advisers, sponsors, and the campus as a whole. They also give members a clear sense of where the team is headed and provide motivation. They should be easily demonstrable and realistic without pushing back dates. A good milestone is one that members will prepare for with the same vigor as the actual competition deadline.

The project description should clearly describe what each milestone is. Milestones can be an objective, parts of several objectives, or the completion of a set of small task such as repairing the robot. Milestones shouldn't be vague objectives such as 'working robots' or 'be ready for competition.' Like objectives some specifics should be given.

At the very least the officers would like to see a milestone for a prototype/rev 1 sometime in the late fall, and a milestone for testing in the late spring. Beyond that milestones for sub-systems are a good place to start. Below is an example of a good set of milestones for a Mars Rover themed competition

Milestones Example

• Sept 15th 2009 - Fix the all the things broken at competition last year and demonstrate the old rover completing some of the task
• After fall break - Demo at least 2 new prototype drive-trains
• Week before dead week - Prototype - Demo new drive-train in tele-op driving, successfully acquire data from sensors, demo a new end-effector,
• Feb 1st - Demo new manipulator using individual joint control
• March 1st - Extended range driving
• Spring Break - Demo some of the competition tasks using the manipulator
• April 30th - Finalize travel plans, demo robot performing some competition objectives

Resources

Every team will need resources to complete their project and the proposal is where teams indicate what will be needed to successful complete the project. Resources are broken down into monetary, personnel and capital outlays/tooling.

Monetary

This is mainly covered in the budget but the proposal should contain a few words on why the team needs the items its requesting. This information will be helpful for the officers in budget defenses for the club and when dealing with potential sponsors.

Personnel

Team leaders should indicate the number of people they feel they will need to be successful and their skill sets. Since we are mostly undergrads, skill sets roughly means interest.

Capital Outlays/Tooling

While our shop and the Tin building provides an abundance of tools, team leaders may find that certain items are not available. There may also be large equipment purchases that the robots will need. In both cases those items should be listed here. Team leaders should also consider what resources that will be needed to manufacture parts and should list those resources here.

Travel/Registration

In the proposal teams should indicate what competition they are going to, what dates the competition is held (or at least a rough idea of when those dates are known), and expected cost for registration and travel. Per the internal travel policy, RoboJackets will only cover the following

• Transportation - Gas at the SGA mileage rate, plane, train, or bus tickets, and rental vehicles.
• Incidentals - Materials for competition, items for the robot, First Aid, anything that would be of use to every member of the team for the purposes of competition except, food, hotel, and entertainment. Example: Ponchos
• Luggage for the robot
• Shipping for the robot
• Fees - Excess baggage, duties,

In addition the proposal should state the anticipated cost for travel per member. This number should include hotel and possibly food, especially if you are going overseas. It should be based on a projected number of attendees.

Schedule

The schedule should detail what phases of the project the team will be working on throughout the year. These phases are derived from the objectives and the milestones and should be broken up by subsystem. A phase called design would not be a good choice as subsystem design times vary and can't all be lumped into one.

There are no formatting rules for the schedule other than it be a separate page and look similar to a Gantt chart. Gnome Planner is preferred though.(You can get it here:http://live.gnome.org/Planner)

Budget

The budget contains details on the cost to build the robot and should provide sufficient detail. An example of sufficient detail are cost for metal for the frame. Its understood that teams may not know what their final design will look like (for example which motor they will go with). Careful study of the market and the competition though can go along way in determining what a maximum cost would be for an item. For RoboJackets, surpluses are okay, deficits are impossible since we can't operate in debt. For an example budget see the 2009-2010 SGA budget. Capital outlays (items that can reasonably get more than a year of use) shouldn't be on the budget.

Supplemental Documentation

Any documentation that the team leader feels is required in addition to the above

Changes, Deadlines, and Penalties

Proposed

In years past teams have found it hard to meet self imposed deadlines, resulting in lopsided development schedules. In addition, member retention has been an issue as new members often leave during lulls in the development, indicating that 'not much was going on'. To address these concerns and to help the club be more successful in its endeavors, there are new rules regarding milestones.

Applicable deadlines

Deadlines for projects are the milestone deadlines and the final travel deadline. For milestone deadlines even partial completion is okay as long as prior notice is given. Partial completion though means significant progress has been made towards completing the milestone. For example if the milestone is to demonstrate tele-op driving, but the wheels haven't come in by the deadline then even showing that the motors turn in response to tele-op commands is sufficient. On the other hand passing a frame off as completion of the deadline is unacceptable unless all the other components are being shipped/made and haven't arrived.

The travel deadline is set as the date in the spring semester by which all travel plans are finalized including, who is going, deposits from members, any paperwork from Tech, and hotels and flights booked. Leniency is given for extenuating circumstances only.

Changes

Changes can be made to any deadline pending officer approval. The criteria for approval are:

• Time till deadline in question
• Progress made
• External factors

Changes should be made well before the deadline in question will be missed. Problems such as 11th hour vendor issues or broken hardware are better served by partial completion instead of change requests.

Penalties

If a team misses a milestone that team's leader must be prepared to meet with the officers and the team's adviser to discuss plans moving forward. Those plans should include a new schedule, milestones, and objectives if necessary. The deadline for arranging this meeting is 7 days after the deadline. If a team leader fails or objects to attending such a meeting, their budget will be frozen until such a meeting takes place. Furthermore, any travel arrangements will be effectively put on hold and no new travel plans can be made. If a team remains in this state of limbo for significant time the officers will taken further action including but not limited to the removal of the team leader per policy and possibly the disbandment of the team per the constitution.

Changes vs. Partial Completion

It is understood that problems will arise along the way (Robotics is still very much a research field). As such team leaders have several options when their projects come into unexpected problems. Change request are best suited for bigger problems that can't be solved by simply moving the deadline back a few weeks. Examples include problems obtaining long lead (3+ weeks) items, inability to complete an objective, and changes to the competition. For problems that can be easily solved partial completion is better. The idea is that if a team has been worked hard to meet a deadline but hits a snafu no additional stress is placed on the members by having to continue to work to meet a new deadline.

A note on authority

In general the officers can only enforce the deadlines and objectives that the team leader defines. Even in the event of a change request the officers can only approve or dis-approve changes that the team leaders come up with. In no instance can an officer create objectives, milestones, or otherwise guide a team. Any officer on a team, on matters of team objectives and milestones, is subject to the decisions of the team leader. The only applicable event in which an officer can have any leadership of a team is if appointed by a team leader or if there are no members to take lead of project.

Procedure for Submission

The proposals are due at 11:59 on the 8/1. They should contain all the sections mention above be in 12pt font, double-spaced, and printed on one side only. The budget should be submitted electronically as a separate excel spreadsheet. It should also be attached to the hard copy. Once all the proposals are in the budget can be made up and then disbursed along with recommendations from the officers and the advisers.