Tips for a Successful Presentation

Presenting under any circumstances requires preparation and practice. For the BEST students reading this blog, this applies to your Marketing Presentation. Below are some tips when preparing for a presentation, and were retrieved from the following website:

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/present/presentation-tips.html

Show passion and connect with your audience

When presenting, especially in front of a large number of people, it is easy to get nervous. When nervous, many people lose the passion in their voice and do not connect with the audience. It is useful to be enthusiastic with the audience as it will engage them with what you are trying to say. Another useful tip is to be honest as it is important to the audience why the topic you are speaking about is important to you, and why they should care too. Using your voice efficiently is another useful tip when speaking to the audience. Varying the speed and tone of your voice will help make your presentation more interesting, therefore keeping the audience’s attention on you. Your voice is not the only thing that keep the audience in tune, your body language is crucial to getting your message across as well. It is estimated that over three quarters of communication is non-verbal. Some useful things to avoid are crossing your arms, keeping your hands in your pockets, and pacing across the stage.

Focus on your Audience

When preparing to present, it is essential to understand who you are speaking to. What are their needs and what do they want to know are two important questions to ask when deciding what to include the presentation. Also, during the presentation, it is useful to pay attention to the reactions of the audience. Are they confused? Is anyone falling asleep? Making the presentation understandable and interesting is an obstacle every speaker deals with because what the audience takes away from the presentation shows how well you presented the information.

Start Strong

The beginning of the presentation is the most crucial. Many listeners will lose interest in the topic within the first few minutes of the presentation. A good way to keep this from happening is include an attention grabber at the beginning of your presentation. A story is a great way to start. People are programmed to respond to stories. They keep the audience entertained and help them remember things as well.

Slideshows

When presenting a PowerPoint, a good rule to implement is the 10-20-30 Rule. This rule suggests that the PowerPoint that is being presented should not contain more than 10 slides, last longer than 20 minutes, or have a font size less than 30 point. The rule is useful as it prevents the speaker from putting too much information on the slides. A good slideshow should be useless without the presenter. If more information needs to be included, a useful tip is to create a handout and give them out after the presentation. You do not want the audience to be distracted while the presentation is going on.

Conclusion

If you take these tips into consideration before your next presentation, you are bound to impress your audience and succeed beyond expectations. Remember, that presentations are almost a work of art. They require a lot of thought, organization, and planning in order to execute them how you envision them in your head. Always proof your presentation before you present, and have someone from the outside witness a practice presentation to give some constructive feedback.

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Organizing a Final Design Report

Having a fantastic design project is great, but it only goes so far unless you can effectively communicate your process, ideas, and final solution to an audience. There are many different ways you can organize all of this information, and typically you will be provided some sort of rubric. It is important to follow the rubric, but also take some time to brainstorm the best flow of the report. You want to make sure your reader can follow what they are reading, and doesn't feel confused or feel like the text is bouncing them around in a million different directions. 

The University of Minnesota, Department of Mechanical Engineering has a great document that explains a great way to organize your final design report. 

(Links below)

http://www.me.umn.edu/education/undergraduate/

http://www.me.umn.edu/education/undergraduate/writing/How-to-write-a-Design-Report.pdf

They split up the structure of the report into three main categories: Problem Definition, Design Description, and Evaluation. This allows the audience to see what problem you are trying to solve, the design process you went through, and did your design do what it was supposed to do. There are many subsections that are needed under these main sections in order to clearly explain all necessary information but I think the building blocks of organizing a report like this are really powerful. 

Now, for something like BEST Robotics, there is a clear structure you should follow based on the judges scoresheet. However, I think it would be beneficial to read through the PDF in the link above as it explains helpful content to a reader, and might help you figure out what information needs to go in what section. Remember not to wait until the last minute to begin writing ANY report. It is important to document and keep track of everything as you work. Writing a final report, is just as important as doing the entire project itself. 

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Project Update

Here are some pictures and videos of the latest progress we have made on our project!

Here is a video of the most recent test flight with our small scale prototype, and 8 motors:

Here is an image of the small scale prototype with 8 Rotors (minus the pusher prop):

Here is are a few images of the large scale prototype (minus any motors, props, electronics):

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 Software

In today's society, with advancements in technology, computers have become a focal point of daily life. This is especially true when it comes to the world of engineering. Most calculations and analysis done in today's engineering fields are almost all done in various forms of software that streamline what you are capable of doing. With this being said, what software you choose to work with becomes a vital factor in your engineering process. 

For our project, the most important needs we had to address was the ability to design, analyze, and code using software. To meet these needs we used a variety of software so that we could complete the tasks involved in creating our final project. 

Starting with needing the ability to design, we chose to use CATIA V5. CATIA V5 is an autocad software that allows the user to create 3d models efficiently and accurately. It also allows  for the assembly of models easily to visualize a finished product. In our case, we used Catia to create a model of our final design "vision", the assembly for our large scale prototype, as well as an innovative design for a motor mount. 

Next, for our analysis needs, the bulk of our stress analysis was done using ANSYS. ANSYS is a software used for various purposed like simulation, elemental and structural analysis, and mathematical computations. We used it to run stress analysis on the frame of our large scale prototype, and many parts that went into the frame, allowing us to see flaws and redesign where needed. 

We used several coding languages throughout the project, as many have different areas they are very useful in and not so useful in others. Matlab was used to help with calculations and analysis as it has some very useful toolboxes for computations. It allowed us to put rigorous equations into it and perform many iterations very quickly as you can change a few variables in the initial code and have a new result almost instantly. Python was used for many various things for our project, as it is a free software with great toolboxes. It has a wide variety of uses and advantages that can be taken control of with a little effort to learn it. Two other coding languages that were used as well and are actually the structure of our code for our prototypes are C++ and Fortran. We decided to use C++ as it is one of the fastest coding languages that can be used with software. This was an important aspect with our project as drones can easily become unstable in a very short length of time, so having a language that can run through our control system fast enough to keep up with small changes every second really swayed us toward it. Fortran was used in combination with C++ because it is very useful with mathematical derivations and various linear algebraic methods with matrices.

So to wrap up, software is a very important aspect when creating and designing. More importantly however, is the software you choose to use. Tying back into research and how important it is to the design process, knowing what kind of challenges and things you will need to do for your project will help greatly when choosing software that fits with what you are aiming to do. In our case, we knew what we needed to accomplish, and were already familiar with software that did it very well so that influenced our choices. 

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Analytical Evaluation of Design Alternatives

Evaluating design alternatives is an important part of communicating your process to anyone reading your design report, or Engineering Notebook (BEST). Your process should be explicit, and the justification (using analytical and mathematical approaches) needs to be well explained. As an example, we will go through our process for two different components of the design of our large scale prototype: the Motor Mounts, and the arm in the upper assembly.

Motor Mounts

When we began the design of the large scale prototype we knew each arm in the upper assembly required two motors to be mounted to each arm (there are four arms, and 8 motors). Knowing this, we needed to design a mount that would attach to the end of the arm enabling a motor to attach both above the arm and below the arm. 

In order to get a better understanding while you read this, here is a picture of the final Catia model of the motor mount.

Figure 1: The final design of the motor mount

The first thing we thought about was what material these mounts would need to be made out of. Initially, we considered manufacturing these mounts out of aluminum. However, due to manufacturing and repeatability issues (i.e. when you make one, can you make them all the same?) we explored alternative material possibilities. With this, the idea of creating the mounts out of ABS plastic came into consideration. 3D Printing the motor mounts could be a good idea, or it could be a bad idea. We had to consider what 3D printers we had access to, the printing processes, the material properties, along with the cost to purchase the material. Once we verified the ABS plastic would meet the required mechanical properties for the motor mount and the loads it would see, we were able to move forward with deciding to 3D print the mounts.

Part of the process in deciding if this new material would work was to do some basic calculations analyzing what kind of load the motor mount would see. Once we determined a maximum stress the part would undergo, we were able to verify the components of ABS plastic would fit. The next stage was to input the Catia file and material properties into ANSYS (an Engineering Software) to ensure the stresses and deformations calculated, were correct. Once verifying this in ANSYS we were able to move to the next stage. 

At this point, it was critical to print a rough mock-up of the motor mount and do some experimental load testing (See Figure 2 & 3 below).

Figure 2: The test pieces that were 3D printed for load testing

We set-up the motor mount test pieces and using a strip of metal and a fish scale applied approximately the maximum load it would see (20 lbs) to check for any cracking, or plastic deformation. This initial test helped to prove ABS plastic would satisfy all of the requirements.

 

Figure 3: The experimental set-up of the preliminary testing of the motor mounts

Now, the next stage was to come up with the actual design. Without giving you all the minor successions of change this design underwent many modifications. We had to look at adding structural pieces to create more support along the edges, we also had to account for how the 3D printer would actually print our piece ensuring the most strength was obtained. 

Arms

When we began the design of the upper assembly we had completed the design of the frame of the large scale prototype, and had the required dimensions. The first thing we had to decide on was the size of the components. The size of pipes, the reinforcement place (near the bend of the tubes) and the mounting plate (bottom where the pipes attach) all had to be decided on. Once huge design requirement we have for the large scale prototype is it must be under 55 pounds. With this being a huge constraint, not only do we have to ensure the design of the upper assembly will be able to withstand the loading and stresses during flight, we also have to optimize the strength-to-wait ratio because it must stay under 55 pounds. 

The first design of the arms was 2 inch aluminum tubing. We ran initial calculations for the maximum bending stress that would be seen at maximum load (20 pounds for each arm) and chose the aluminum based on those properties. We created the Catia model and ran the same stress calculations in ANSYS confirming the arm would not deform or fail during loading. Everything was finalized and ready for prototyping. When one of our team members who is manufacturing the entire large scale prototype put the tubing through the pipe bender in order to achieve the curve, because the die of the pipe bender is made for 2 inch pipe not 2 inch tubing, the tube didn't fit perfectly. When the tube went through the bender, the corner crinkled, causing the tube wall to buckle. So what does this mean? Basically, an entire redesign is needed. One thing in particular that matters in this case is to choose aluminum pipe that the company we are manufacturing this at has the corresponding size die for. We chose a new size aluminum piping (1-1/4" with 1.660" OD wall), and re-did all of our initial calculations. We put the new Catia model through ANSYS to verify everything would still satisfy the requirements and were ready to manufacture the arms again. The interesting thing about design is sometimes you can't predict what happens in testing. In a "vacuum" everything works, and in real-life unfortunately not everything goes as planned. The benefit of engineering is you can adapt to these unforeseen circumstances and redesign if failures occur. 

Below is the final design of the upper arm assembly (See Figure 4).

Figure 4: The final upper arm assembly

Closing

This excerpt is just a brief look into explaining a little of what we had to consider and evaluate during the process of this design. At each point in solidifying your design any designs you make should have proof behind why you are making them. Inserting initial basic calculations, initial testing experiments, and any research of what is required of your designs needs to be included in this section to fully demonstrate how you went from the brainstorming, to concept development, to final solution. There are some methods that could be helpful when evaluating different design alternatives, and this includes using Pugh charts or morphological matrices. As always, with design it is important to look into prior work and relevant patents that could apply to the design you are considering.

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How to Brainstorm Effectively

Before we begin this blog post, let me say there are a lot of different ways and opinions on what the most effective way to brainstorm is. The information described below was modified from Brain Fuel's "The 6 stages of a truly good brainstorm session" and Lucidchart's "How to Brainstorm: 5 Ways to Get the Creative Juices Flowing". Applying even one of the techniques described below really will make a difference in how you and your team executes your brainstorming. 

Brainstorming Effectively

Brainstorming occurs during the Generating phase of The Engineering Design Process. While it is often overlooked as a trivial part of group work, it is really one of the most important aspects in creating a product. Many people have trouble beginning the brainstorming process, however, brainstorming can be broken down into a few stages. A few rules to keep in mind as you go through these stages are the following:

• Focus on quantity
  
• Withhold Criticism 
  
• Don't be afraid of crazy ideas
  
• Build upon each other's good ideas
  

With those in mind, the following stages can be followed to create a successful brainstorming environment.

Prep

Know your problem. Tying into to how import research is, without knowing your actual problem, and the various issues surrounding it, you won't be able to come up with solutions. Therefore, prepping and knowing your problem is critical before a brainstorming session.

Warm-up

In cases where you hardly know the team you are working with, or are not comfortable with them yet it is important to do a warm-up (or icebreaker). This step is critical as it will aide in creating a positive atmosphere where people can talk about ideas freely. Icebreakers are a prime example as they can introduce similarities among team members and get conversations flowing.

Divergence

Here your team will try to come up with as many ideas as you can. A useful tip would be to have material such as sticky notes or whiteboards, so that all ideas and solutions can be recorded and are visually tangible to the group. DO NOT HOLD BACK. All ideas are welcome at this stage; do not be afraid of unusual ideas or solutions. It is extremely important during this stage that all of the ideas, sketches, and suggestions are documented for your Engineering Technical Notebooks (BEST Robotics). Having pictures of groups of students working around a whiteboard full of sticky notes with ideas really shows the audience you were working together to have a successful brainstorming session.

Convergence

Here is where the team will take a step back and view the ideas generated focusing in on which ideas are feasible, and which ideas may  not make too much sense. Explain to each other why one idea might be a better approach than the other. Discuss and hear everyone's opinions, but most importantly document this thought process and discussion. 

Decision

Finally, once you have sorted the good ideas from the not so good ideas, and have a decent working group of solutions, it is time to choose which path best fits your project. This discussion again is really important to document. We don't want to just know that you went with option C, but we want to know why options A & B weren't chosen and why you think option C is the best solution for your problem. Remember, it always goes back to truly understanding the problem you are trying to solve. 

Hopefully this brief outline of an effective brainstorming session was helpful! If you are interested in reading the articles we found helpful, or watching a great video on brainstorming the links are below. The video begins with some techniques that are not very helpful in having effective brainstorming, and finishes with the recommended way to get the best out of a brainstorming session with your team.

If you want more information check out the links below from Brain Fuel and Lucidchart, as well as the youtube video from Stanford's Design Lab.

https://medium.com/brainfuel/brain-fuel-funnel-the-6-stages-of-a-truly-good-brainstorm-session-5782d8e4cc8c

https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/how-to-brainstorm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmoWCSyujPY

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 Why is doing Research important?

A critical step to the Engineering Design Process (from our blog post last week) is to do research, and look up any background information that is needed in order to develop a design solution. Research for a project could also be called a Technical Review, and includes background information, prior work, and relevant patents.

For our project it was important to start with researching what is currently being done in the Urban Air Mobility field with control systems. Are companies already considering what we are trying to offer as a solution? What is being done with the safety of the Urban Air Taxi's that are currently being published in papers? Are there any existing patents we need to be aware of with the design of our control system? All of these questions are very important in having a good understanding of the direction of your project, as well as a clear picture of what the current "state of the art" is for your project.

Another important aspect of research is to see if any of the existing solutions actually worked. After you understand the problem you are trying to solve, knowing solutions that didn't work are also extremely helpful when you are brainstorming possible ideas (because then you know NOT to try what someone else did).

Research is truly fundamental in the beginning of any project or process. You should know the background information about every aspect of your project, and be up to date on the latest technology that exists. For the BEST Robotics Competition, it would be important for you to tie this into your research with each game by figuring out what is currently being done with what problem you are trying to solve. As an example, with the Current Events game it would have been important to research how companies are handling trash in the ocean, and if anything is being done to solve this problem. Knowing this, you could have figured out a design solution and applied it to your robot design.


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The Engineering Design Process

Taken and adapted from Engineering Design Second Edition by Rudolph J. Eggert.

What is Engineering Design?

Engineering design is a set of decision making processes used to determine the form of an object given the functions desired by the customer. Design problems involve consensus building and group decision making such as in determining customer needs and evaluation criteria. A simplified model of the process used to solve design problems will be discussed below.

An overview of the Engineering Design Process we use in our Senior Design Project.

Formulating

Here it is important to understand what the design problem is, and to prepare a plan for its solution.

For example, our problem statement for our project is the following:

The problem with Urban Air Taxi's that are currently being developed is that their controllers have not been proven to be capable of handling failures. Our client (Southern Aerospace Systems and Technology, LLC) desires a way to create a controller that will adaptively handle unknown failures within the motors of the Urban Air Taxi, as well as interface with the "vision" of their Urban Air Taxi that they have created so far (See Figure 1 and Figure 2). Once we established the "problem" we were trying to solve, we were able to figure out a plan for its solution. Sometimes it is important to do background research on the "field of study" your problem falls into in order to understand what your client wants. 

Generating

During this stage brainstorming occurs, and creative alternative design ideas are generated in an attempt to satisfy the customer. Analysis on these design alternatives will be completed later. 

For example, in the beginning of our project we had to sit down and brainstorm various ideas not only for creating the control system, but also for the design of the large scale prototype. Several team members had many ideas and we went through each possibility, combining points from each idea to create a focus of where we wanted to take our project. We did a lot of research in this stage, not only about "Urban Air Taxi's" but also about flying objects (at one point we even considered how a flying squirrel operates).  

Analyzing

This stage includes predicting the performance or behavior of a design candidate. Engineering models will be prepared using knowledge from basic sciences and mathematics, in order to analyze each design solution. If none of the solutions prove to be feasible, a redesign occurs and a loop back to generate alternatives is created.

For example, in this stage we are doing a lot of modeling in CATIA (similar to SolidWorks) and we are doing stress analysis calculations analytically and numerically (hand calculations and Finite Element Analysis in ANSYS). This analysis helps us iterate design solutions in order to figure out what works best for what we need. Sometimes material changes, sizing changes, interface changes might not be considered up front but could cause issues if they weren't caught. 

Evaluating

This stage compares the performance of each feasible design, in order to select which design will be the best alternative. Evaluation criteria can include performance measures (speed, size, reliability) and it is also important to think about optimizing the design methods. 

For example, once we finalize all of our design plans we hope to test the small scale prototype and large scale prototype with the adaptive control system to see if they match the results from the simulation. This will prove if our design solution worked, or if we have to go back to the drawing board. 

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If you are interested in learning more check out the textbook below:

Engineering Design, Second Edition.
Rudolph J. Eggert
Copyright 2010 High Peak Press
ISBN 978-0-615-31938-4

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