Week ONE at MIT !!

In one word - AMAZING!

 In the true sense of the word -

• Amazing place - the campus and the beautiful skyline of Boston city beside Charles river
• Amazing cohort - wonderfully accomplished people
• Amazing team - my design challenge team. Could not have been more perfect. Each member was so smart and so co-operative. Loved being a part of it
• Amazing to see all 14 teams up to the task and actually coming up so many brilliant solutions to the design challenge
• Last but not the least - I was amazed at how quickly the week went and how much fun we had inspite of all the long hours we all put in.

Day 1 was introduction of all the 100+ folks including people from IDM, Grad certificate and our very own SDM. Took the entire day but was very very interesting to see how varied the group was and how much folks had done in their lives and careers.


Later in the evening, the actual design challenge was finally revealed to us.

We had to build a drone from a F550 kit and LEGO parts. Also, the drone had to be able to do the following tasks.

1.  Shoot at a target
2. Pick up and deliver a fixed load
3. Carry a dangerous liquid and be able to deliver it safely

WOW!! That is a lot of tasks.

But first order of business was naming our drone. After a long discussion, we come up with a nice name - the flying lobster!!



Next day were the team building events -  they were fun and we learnt some stuff too - about ourselves and our team mates.


 

Most of the next few days were the same hectic schedule  - sessions from professors in the morning and DC in the evening.

In between all these, the TA's came up with more interesting stuff for us to do.
Small competitions that were both fun and had a purpose behind them.

The scavenger hunt was so much fun. We got to visit all the beautiful MIT buildings and departments and learn a bit about each. Basically find our way through - helps us get familiar with MIT.


Here is a link to all the wonderful stuff that we did - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l4rt4pr995ert29/AAAtRFuCuh5eOKg318vr2Idya?dl=0

The good part - we came third among 14 teams in this event!!

There were also the singing contest as well as the poster contest, which were pretty interesting too.
We had to make up a song featuring our drone and a single page poster selling our drone idea.


We built and re-built and then built some more, to just perfect our drone with all the mechanisms to do each of the allocated tasks. So much went into the finer details - it was inspiring.

We had some good food to go all these days - it helped us keep going.
I however will have to agree that I ate the best when we had the Indian food - nan, rice, chicken makhani and dal. Had it probably after a fortnight and boy, did it taste good!!

Oh and not to forget the beer and yummy food at the Mead Hall after so much running around for the scavenger hunt.. It was so good!

There was also the formal photo shoot at - at the famous MIT dome, of course !!
All of us were dressed and looked sharp.




We got to finally test the drones on Thursday late evening and it took a while to figure out what was wrong with it. But fly we did and it was exhilarating to see all the hard work take shape as the drone actually took off!! YAY!!

All of Friday spent in doing the final touches, ensuring all the mechanisms work fine for each of liquid, load and shooting. After some really late night testing and flying, we were ready for the big day - Saturday!!
Important to note here is that at this point we were in second place in overall standings!

















The week had just gone by so fast, it was almost a blur!!

Saturday -  day started off with presentations - 3 minutes for each team. They were so innovative -  people had put in so much of their creativity. I personally loved the one with JP as the lego guy - it was so funny and smart.
 
Regarding the drones - wow! People are so creative, it just blows my mind.
Not just our team, but everyone else.
To top it all, everyone was eagerly helping each other out in the true sense of Co-Opetition!!
We will leave it to another day what "co-opetition" means.



Then came the final fight - game ON!
We did pretty well in the first round; we were up first and we did just right on the tasks.

But it did not go exactly as planned from here on.
It was a fight that we almost won, but not quite.
There was some healthy competition and arguably the best team won!
Here are some of the video clips of the morning and afternoon sessions respectively
(compilation courtesy - Dave Schultz)

https://youtu.be/T17FoJQfLQI 

https://youtu.be/XqKGolO0LN0https://youtu.be/XqKGolO0LN0

But what we did win was satisfaction and great team work. Got to know some great individuals and felt proud of what we had been able to achieve in such a short time.

Followed next was a wonderful celebration of completion of DC 1 on the 6th floor of Media Lab. Great food, good beer and an awesome view of the Boston skyline in the golden evening sun!



Week 1 down! Bring on Week 2. :-)