Wednesday 1 December 2021

Critical Reflection

Reflection of Module Learning and Project Learning

Through the few weeks of the module, I was able to come closer to my goal of communicating with others using proper conversations that I had set at the beginning of the module. Compared to how I conversed with others on the first week, I believe that I am better at conveying my thoughts to others now. There were countless mediums that helped me to develop good conversational skills, bringing me closer to achieving my goal Previously, in junior college, as part of my A’ Levels Project Work examination, I was required to present our work to a panel of examiners. At that point in time, I was too shy and nervous to converse. However, from the start of this module, I was able to gain confidence in conversing and this was clear to me when I was doing an elevator pitch. During the three-minute pitch, I felt more confident than I thought I would be. I understood that this was mainly because I was interested in the topic that I was learning and had critically evaluated as much detail of the topic as possible such as understanding the design context of the robot that I was pitching to the rest. I believe that I was closer to achieving my goal as I was pulled out of my comfort zone and was forced to communicate with other classmates or even present short ideas in front of the class. Using the skills I had developed from this module, I aim to use it future presentations and when I coordinate with my team members. Moreover, through continuous conversations with team members or doing proper presentations, I think I would be able to develop my skills further as this would increase my experience of speaking in front of people to whom I need to convey my idea to such that they would be able to accept my ideas.

 

In the process of achieving my goal, one learning aspect I have gained from my project would be the writing skills. For the project work that I had done for my A’ Levels, the style of writing a report was different. Through this module, I was able to learn the different types of reports that we might experience and mainly touched on the technical report writing skills. My team took it upon ourselves to suggest a modification for the Thermite RS3 developed by Howe and Howe Technologies. Through the process of identifying the area of improvement it required, I learnt that the foundation of the proposed solution lies in identifying the problem statement and purpose statement having known how the robot works and what are its specifications. This helped us to be able to create a suggestion for the modification of the robot. We were able to discover other sources and research done that involved firefighting robots and implemented similar solutions to our proposed solution. The main takeaway from this experience would be that I was able to gain the skills required to write a proper technical report by understanding the process of writing the report and identifying good resources that would help me to support my ideas and validate my content. Through this experience, for future technical reports, with my current understanding of how to write it properly, I would be able to tackle them and complete the report properly.

Sunday 17 October 2021

Draft 3

 Helicopter Ingenuity

From the article by Gohd (2021), ‘Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red planet’, helicopter Ingenuity took off successfully on April 19, 2021. Tucked in NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s belly, it was NASA’s first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Some of helicopter Ingenuity's features are solar panels, batteries, rotor blades, and cameras. According to Gohd (2021), the helicopter's solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries that provide enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day. Gohd (2021) also mentioned Ingenuity to have two cameras on board, one with 0.3-megapixel black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, used for navigation. The other camera is a 12-megapixel high-resolution that looks out to the horizon. As mentioned in the article, the helicopter has rotor blades of just under 1.2 meters across, powered by a small solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

Although helicopter Ingenuity currently is not a transportation device, it proved that flight on another planet is possible using its rotor blades and navigated around Mars using its 3D imaging system.

Helicopter Ingenuity was able to succeed in its mission to prove that powered flight is possible on Mars with the use of powerful rotor blades. According to Iles (2021), it was mentioned that the rotor must spin at a speed that creates a lift force. To achieve this, the carbon fibre rotors spin at a high speed of 2,400 revolutions per minute. Ingenuity’s blades are 1.2m from tip to tip while its body is merely the size of a tissue box as mentioned by Iles (2021). According to Potter (2021), Mars’ atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth where Mars has an atmospheric volume of less than 1% that of Earth’s. There are other challenges in flying a helicopter on Mars which included wind and dust storms and making sure that the craft has enough power from its solar array as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Therefore, despite the harsh weather conditions on Mars, the fact that Ingenuity was successfully able to fly 3 metres above the surface lasting for 40 seconds according to Gohd (2021) on its first try is remarkable.

 

Moreover, using its 3D imaging system, helicopter Ingenuity can autonomously navigate around Mars. With the use of the cameras and sensors on its body, Ingenuity can detect the surface below it and map a 3D reconstruction of it that allows it to determine the suitable landing spots as mentioned by Brockers (2021). According to Brockers (2021), it was mentioned that due to the distance between Earth and Mars, manual control of the helicopter is not possible for take-off and landing. Therefore, the team had to include this 3D imaging system that allowed Ingenuity to perform its flights and landing autonomously. With this novel system, Ingenuity would be able to revolutionize space exploration and access regions where it is difficult to travel with the use of rovers.

Nonetheless, helicopter Ingenuity is not a fully-fledged transportation device. This is because it has very little additional technology as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Another reason according to Potter (2020) is that Ingenuity was only intended as a technology demonstration. However, according to NASA (n.d), it was mentioned that NASA hopes to increase Ingenuity’s usage to use it as a transportation device where it could assist any astronauts working on that planet.

Regardless of being a relatively small and minute demonstration, Ingenuity was able to break the boundary of surface travel on Mars. Thus, helicopter Ingenuity would be the first step into easier space and planet explorations and be a device that scientists hope would be a good assist to astronauts.

 

Amos, J. (2021, April 19). NASA successfully flies small helicopter on Mars. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56799755.

Brockers, R. (2021, June), Autonomous Safe Landing Site Detection for a Future Mars Science Helicopter. IEEE Xplore. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org.singaporetech.remotexs.co/abstract/document/9438289.

Gohd, C. (2021, May 22). Mars helicopter ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet. Space.com. https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-perseverance-rover.

Iles, G. (2021, June 4). So a helicopter flew on Mars for the first time. A space physicist explains why that's such a big deal. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/so-a-helicopter-flew-on-mars-for-the-first-time-a-space-physicist-explains-why-thats-such-a-big-deal-159334.

 

NASA. (n.d.). Mars helicopter. NASA. https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Overview.

Potter, N. (2021, July), A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover – [NEWS]. IEEE Spectrum, 57(7), 06-07 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9126096.

 

Wednesday 13 October 2021

Reader Response Draft 2.5

 Helicopter Ingenuity


From the article by Gohd (2021), ‘Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red planet’, helicopter Ingenuity took off successfully on April 19, 2021. Tucked in NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s belly, it was NASA’s first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Some of helicopter Ingenuity's features are solar panels, batteries, rotor blades, and cameras. According to Gohd (2021), the helicopter's solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries that provide enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day. Gohd (2021) also mentioned Ingenuity to have two cameras on board, one with 0.3-megapixel black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, used for navigation. The other camera is a 12-megapixel high-resolution that looks out to the horizon. As mentioned in the article, the helicopter has rotor blades of just under 1.2 meters across, powered by a small solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

Although the helicopter currently is not a transportation device, Ingenuity’s rotor blades proved that flight on another planet is possible while performing it autonomously using its enhanced 3D imaging system.

Helicopter Ingenuity was able to succeed in its mission to prove that powered flight is possible on the Mars with the use of powerful rotor blades. In the article by Potter (2021) ’A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA’s Perseverance rover’, Mars’ atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth where Mars has an atmospheric volume of less than 1% that of Earth’s. There are other challenges in flying a helicopter on Mars which included wind and dust storms and making sure that the craft has enough power from its solar array as mentioned by Gohd (2021). In the article by Gail (2021) ‘So a helicopter flew on Mars for the first time. A space physicist explains why that’s such a big deal’, it was mentioned that the rotor must spin at a speed that creates a lift force. To achieve this, the carbon fibre rotors spin at a high speed of 2,400 revolutions per minute. Ingenuity’s blades are 1.2m from tip to tip while its body is merely the size of a tissue box as mentioned by Gail (2021). Therefore, the rotor blades played a key role so that Ingenuity can demonstrate flight on another planet for the first time.

 

Moreover, using its 3D imaging system, helicopter Ingenuity is able to autonomously navigate around Mars. In the article by Brockers (2021) ‘Autonomous Safe Landing Site Detection for a Future Mars Science Helicopter’, it was mentioned that due to the distance between Earth and Mars, manual control of the helicopter is not possible for take off and landing. Therefore, the team had to include a system that allowed Ingenuity to perform its flights and landing autonomous. With use of the cameras and sensors on its body, Ingenuity is able to detect the surface below it and map a 3D reconstruction of it that allows it to determine the suitable landing spots as mentioned by Brockers (2021). With this novel system, Ingenuity would be able to revolutionize space exploration and access regions where it is difficult to travel on the travel with use of rovers.

Nonetheless, helicopter Ingenuity is not a fully-fledged transportation device. It has very little additional technology as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Potter (2020) also mentioned that Ingenuity was only intended as a technology demonstration. However, in the article NASA (n.d) ‘Mars helicopter’, it was mentioned that NASA hopes to increase Ingenuity’s usage to use it as a transportation device where it could assist any astronauts working on that planet.

Regardless of being a relatively small and minute experiment, Ingenuity was able to break the boundary of surface travel on Mars. Thus, helicopter Ingenuity would be the first step into easier space and planet explorations and be a device that scientists hope would be a good assist to astronauts.


References

Amos, J. (2021, April 19). NASA successfully flies small helicopter on Mars. BBC News. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56799755.

Brockers, R. (2021, June), “Autonomous Safe Landing Site Detection for a Future Mars Science Helicopter,” in IEEE Xplore https://ieeexplore.ieee.org.singaporetech.remotexs.co/abstract/document/9438289.

Gail Iles Senior Lecturer in Physics. (2021, June 4). So a helicopter flew on Mars for the first time. A space physicist explains why that's such a big deal. The Conversation. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://theconversation.com/so-a-helicopter-flew-on-mars-for-the-first-time-a-space-physicist-explains-why-thats-such-a-big-deal-159334.

Gohd, C. (2021, May 22). Mars helicopter ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet. Space.com. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-perseverance-rover.

NASA. (n.d.). Mars helicopter. NASA. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Overview.

Potter, N. (2021, July), "A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover - [News]," in IEEE Spectrum, 57( 7) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9126096.



Saturday 9 October 2021

Reader Response Draft 2

 

Helicopter Ingenuity


From the article by Gohd (2021), ‘Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red planet’, helicopter Ingenuity took off successfully on April 19, 2021. Tucked in NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s belly, it was NASA’s first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Some of helicopter Ingenuity's features are solar panels, batteries, rotor blades, and cameras. Based on the article, the helicopter's solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries that provide enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day. Gohd (2021) also mentioned Ingenuity to have two cameras on board, one with 0.3-megapixel black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, used for navigation. The other camera is a 12-megapixel high-resolution that looks out to the horizon. As mentioned in the article, the helicopter has rotor blades of just under 1.2 meters across, powered by a small solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

Despite its small range of functions, helicopter Ingenuity proves that flight on another planet is possible, coincidentally performing this autonomously.  

Helicopter Ingenuity was able to succeed in its mission to prove that powered flight is possible on the Mars. In the article by Potter (2021) ’A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA’s Perseverance rover’, Mars’ atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth where Mars has an atmospheric volume of less than 1% that of Earth’s. Moreover, Potter (2021) also mentioned that the temperature on Mars could decrease to -100 degree Celsius at night at the landing site. There are other challenges in flying a helicopter on Mars which included wind and dust storms and making sure that the craft has enough power from its solar array as mentioned by Gohd (2021). In another article by Amos (2021) ‘NASA successfully flies small helicopter on Mars’, it was mentioned that due to the sheer distance between Earth and Mars, manually controlling the device was out of question. Therefore, it is a big accomplishment that helicopter Ingenuity was successfully able to lift off for up to three meters above the surface for about 40 seconds on its first try.

Moreover, helicopter Ingenuity is able to autonomously navigate around Mars. In the article by Brockers (2021) ‘Autonomous Safe Landing Site Detection for a Future Mars Science Helicopter’, it was mentioned that due to the distance between Earth and Mars, manual control of the helicopter is not possible for take off and landing. Therefore, the team had to include a system that allowed Ingenuity to perform its flights and landing autonomous. With use of the cameras and sensors on its body, Ingenuity is able to detect the surface below it and map a 3D reconstruction of it that allows it to determine the suitable landing spots as mentioned by Brockers (2021). With this novel system, Ingenuity would be able to revolutionize space exploration and access regions where it is difficult to travel on the travel with use of rovers.

Nonetheless, helicopter Ingenuity is not a fully-fledged transportation device. It has very little additional technology as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Potter (2020) also mentioned that Ingenuity was only intended as a technology demonstration. However, in the article NASA (n.d) ‘Mars helicopter’, it was mentioned that NASA hopes to increase Ingenuity’s usage to use it as a transportation device where it could assist any astronauts working on that planet.

Regardless of being a relatively small and minute experiment, Ingenuity was able to break the boundary of surface travel on Mars. Thus, helicopter Ingenuity would be the first step into easier space and planet explorations and be a device that scientists hope would be a good assist to astronauts.


References

Gohd, C. (2021, May 22). Mars helicopter ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet. Space.com. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-perseverance-rover.

Potter, N. (2021, July), "A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover - [News]," in IEEE Spectrum, 57( 7) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9126096.

Amos, J. (2021, April 19). NASA successfully flies small helicopter on Mars. BBC News. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56799755.

Brockers, R. (2021, June), “Autonomous Safe Landing Site Detection for a Future Mars Science Helicopter,” in IEEE Xplore https://ieeexplore.ieee.org.singaporetech.remotexs.co/abstract/document/9438289.

NASA. (n.d.). Mars helicopter. NASA. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Overview.

Wednesday 6 October 2021

Reader Response Draft 1

Helicopter Ingenuity

From the article by Gohd (2021), ‘Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red planet’, helicopter Ingenuity took off successfully on April 19, 2021. Tucked in NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s belly, it was NASA’s first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Some of helicopter Ingenuity's features are solar panels, batteries, rotor blades, and cameras. Based on the article, the helicopter's solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries that provide enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day. Gohd (2021) also mentioned Ingenuity to have two cameras on board, one with 0.3-megapixel black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, used for navigation. The other camera is a 12-megapixel high-resolution that looks out to the horizon. As mentioned in the article, the helicopter has rotor blades of just under 1.2 meters across, powered by a small solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

Despite its small range of functions, helicopter Ingenuity proves that flight of drone on another planet is possible, conjunctionally taking images of the planet or space. 

Helicopter Ingenuity was able to prove that powered flight is possible on the Mars. Based on Potter (2021), Mars’ atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth where Mars has an atmospheric volume of less than 1% that of Earth’s. Moreover, the temperature on Mars could decrease to -100 degree Celsius at night at the landing site. There were other challenges in flying a helicopter on Mars which included wind and dust storms and making sure that the craft has enough power from its solar array as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Amos (2021) also mentioned that due to the sheer distance between Earth and Mars, manually controlling the device was out of question. Therefore, it is a big accomplishment that helicopter Ingenuity was successfully able to lift off for up to three meters above the surface for about 40 seconds on its first try.

Helicopter Ingenuity is equipped with cameras and sensors that allow it to navigate around Mars. Based on Amos (2021) Ingenuity has two cameras onboard. The black-and-white camera points to the ground to navigate around the planet while the high-resolution coloured camera looks out into the open horizon in order to display the view back to the engineers and scientists on Earth. Photographs taken for navigation were also sent back to Earth. These images revealed the helicopter’s shadow on the floor of the crater as it came to land back down as quoted by Amos (2021). Thus, Ingenuity is able to capture the necessary images required and send them back to Earth for NASA engineers and scientists to view upon it.

 

Nonetheless, helicopter Ingenuity is not a fully-fledged transportation device. It has very little additional technology as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Potter (2020) also mentioned that Ingenuity was only intended as a technology demonstration. However, NASA(n.d) mentioned that it hopes to increase Ingenuity’s usage to use it as a transportation device where it could assist any astronauts working on that planet. Therefore, the helicopter is not exactly suitable for different types of tests that would help the astronauts and scientists in the future.

 

Regardless of being a relatively small and minute experiment, Ingenuity was able to break the boundary of surface travel on Mars. Thus, helicopter Ingenuity would be the first step into easier space and planet explorations where images of these expeditions could be returned back using the quality cameras. Together with that, NASA hopes to modify the device such that it could aid astronauts as a transport device.

 

References

Gohd, C. (2021, May 22). Mars helicopter ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet. Space.com. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-perseverance-rover.

Potter, N. (2021, July), "A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover - [News]," in IEEE Spectrum, 57( 7) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9438289

Amos, J. (2021, April 19). NASA successfully flies small helicopter on Mars. BBC News. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56799755.

NASA. (n.d.). Mars helicopter. NASA. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Overview. 

Summary Draft 3 of Helicopter Ingenuity

The article by Gohd (2021), 'Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet', introduces features and functions of helicopter Ingenuity that took off successfully on April 19, 2021. Tucked in NASA's Perseverance Rover's belly, NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity is the first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of the agency's Mars 2020 mission.

Some of the helicopter Ingenuity's features are solar panels, batteries, rotor blades, and cameras. Based on the article, the helicopter's solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries that provide enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day. Gohd also mentioned ingenuity to have two cameras on board, one with 0.3-megapixel black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, used for navigation. The other camera is a 12-megapixel high-resolution that looks out to the horizon. As mentioned in the article, the helicopter has rotor blades of just under 1.2 meters across, powered by a small solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

Monday 27 September 2021

Summary Draft 1 of Helicopter Ingenuity

The article by Gohd (2021), 'Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet.', introduces features and functions of helicopter Ingenuity that took off successfully on April 19—hovering briefly up to 10 feet above the Martian surface, it lasted for 40 seconds before landing back down. 


Tucked in NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s belly, NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity is the first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of the agency’s Mars 2020 mission. Preparing for its flight, Ingenuity underwent multiple tests, including warming up its rotor blades. An issue surfaced during its first full-speed blade test, causing a delay from its initial planned flight. On April 22, Ingenuity took off again, higher and longer this time, with the height of 16.5 feet and lasting 52 seconds. The craft was able to lift off and turn its color camera in multiple directions during its flight. Despite its tiny build, the Ingenuity has large blades that stretch to 4 feet across its body while standing about 19 inches tall. Ingenuity has blades with 2,500 revolutions per minute, while helicopters on earth that carry human passengers have an average of 450 revolutions per minute. Due to the distance between Mars and Earth, the mission team members cannot control Ingenuity in real-time. Therefore, a function was designed for Ingenuity to move in directions beamed out to mars autonomously. 

Wednesday 15 September 2021

Formal Introduction Letter

Dear Professor Brad

This is Harshini Senthilarasu from Robotics Systems. I am writing to you to introduce myself. I finished my A ‘Levels last year and was able to clinch a spot at SIT Robotics Systems. Since young, I find myself to be a hands-on person. However, it was only after A ‘Levels that I truly figured out my interests. I am interested in programming as it feels like learning a whole new language. I also picked up an interest in Artificial Intelligence during the long break I had between junior college and university. Robotics Systems combines my interests of programming, engineering machines and Artificial Intelligence, leading me to join this course. Moreover, I believe that my interest in all the aspects of this degree programme is what make me unique. Although I am relatively new to this engineering course, I believe that with hard work and determination I will become an engineer.

One strength I have in communication would be that I can converse easily with people having learnt English since young as one of my main languages of communication. I experience this daily when I communicate with my friends. However, one weakness that I have after living in Singapore for many years is that I have picked up the lingo and am not able to have a proper conversation without using colloquial words. Nonetheless, I can identify the situations that require a proper conversation. Thus, I practice doing so in the case that when required I am able to have a proper conversation in important events such as a work interview for example. Therefore, through this Critical Thinking and Communication module, I aim to practice having more proper conversations and develop my skills in English, so I can communicate with others more fluently.

With regards

Harshini Senthilarasu

Sunday 12 September 2021

Unit 01 Task 5.2

 How do I see communication and critical thinking impacting my future role as a leader in the workplace?

Critical thinking fuels effective communication. Without proper communication, as a leader, I don’t believe I would be able to convey my thoughts to employees. Critical thinking would help me to think carefully and ensure I present logical explanations. As a leader in the future, I would also ensure my employees are provided with proper education on critical thinking and communication. This would help to improve the employer-employee relationship. By doing so, it would significantly reduce the misunderstandings between workers that might turn up. This would also help to ensure that project management is effective which would result in the company gaining good reviews that would eventually help the company to grow. At the same time, money spent to develop employee’s communication and critical thinking would also be of good use. This would definitely lead to better work experience and connection between workers. Hence, these steps would modify the environment of the company making it more like a second home to workers.


Wednesday 8 September 2021

Unit 01 Task 3 Reflection

Explain what the following quote means to you  

“Without clear lines of communication, our ideas would stay within our own
small development teams instead of becoming mature products. While this is
obvious to those of us who have become experienced engineers, the real
question is: Why is it lost to us when we are engineering students?”

           Dr. Akbar R Khan, Software Systems Engineer, USA,
“Good Communication Is Essential...” (2014)

It describes that without communication, our innovations would stay within a small circle rather than being nurtured into finished products. With experience in their specific fields, engineers  develop the necessary communication skills to portray their thoughts as they understand communication is a necessity. However, during their schooling years, communication is not given emphasis and hence engineers are forced to pick it up on their own.