For the upcoming College Royal we have formed three teams to build small autonomous vehicles.
Team Alpha :Matt Chandler, Mike Lanigan, & Rudy Meyenburg
Team Beta :Matthees Tharmalingam, Colin Peart & Chris Holliday
Team Gamma :Alex Boulanger, James Stark & Eric Gaudet

A few weeks ago we went over the basic wiring of a simple "reactive" robot based completely on an analog circuit. The key here is start building something. Become comfortable with the medium. Remember to buy lots of batteries. Actually, I'll track down Janet Diebel on that one. She promised to pay for the batteries I used up at Open House.

The group agreed that the creation of these first 'bots should be looked upon as testimonials of our commitment to the AV Project. To put a different spin on it, they should act as our "ambassadors" when we go looking for future funding. $$$$ :-)

Mike Lanigan has agreed to become our Master Scrounger. To date he's tracked down a number of local TV repair shops who have offered to set aside some electronic components for us.

Colin Peart came up with the intriguing suggestion of pursuing toy companies for rejects. How 'bout trying "Little Tikes" here in Guelph, Colin? They're in the yellow pages under toys.

I've asked Alan Miller if we could have access to the Electrical Lab. He's cool with the idea once a swipe card reader gets installed. He also said that the school has about 30 Motorola M68HC11 microcontrollers, of which maybe a dozen are in use. This is good since I have a book that tells us how to use the "HC11" to build simple robots.

Through the mother organization, "Systems Society," we have use of an office. It's a desk and a filing cabinet and a few floor tiles in Room 131/132 (unmarked black door next to Real Time Systems Lab). This is shared space with other clubs. At this time, no one's in there because the lock on the door doesn't work. I tried the key to it today, but unfortunately it doesn't lock the door. Mrs. Peggy Coghlan will be (re)calling the locksmith to remedy the situation. I'll check up on it again early next week.

Alex Boulanger has managed to raise our first cash ($45). The money comes from Eng Soc. Be sure to put them on your Christmas card list. Alex has also taken charge of the College Royal project and acted (informally anyway) as our secretary. I nominate Alex for Employee of the Week. Thanks Alex.

Also, Chris Holliday has taken up the task gathering together a corporate sponsorship candidates list. Chris will report his findings to us tomorrow.

One of the noteworthy outcomes of the last couple of meetings has been the quiet evolution of a club-building strategy. We agreed to pursue the following general course:

1) first gather experience building small AV's
2) then begin entering local AV contests
3) then host our own AV contests

To this end we dispatched Matt Chandler to do some research on contests for us. He's come back with a whole pile of stuff which we hope to have up soon on our newly revised...

Web Master Matthees Tharmalingam has revamped the site. It now includes the AVP gazettes and some other new sections, as well as an ever-growing Progress page which we use to keep the project visible to those who cannot always (ever?) make it to the meetings. This should help our new...

Richard Audette has asked to become the group's first "historian." Richard's request to become the group's historian / archivist caught us all off-guard, but when we saw the glow on his face while he was proposing the role we could hardly refuse him the job. This came on the heels of a report that Richard and Jeff Bassett submitted to us, namely their revised...

Have a look at the brief mission statement (mission2.htm) which now includes some constraints and criteria. Remember that we voted to pursue an explorer / mapmaker that would serve the needs of the visually impaired. Speculation : Jeff and Richard didn't join one of the small 'bot teams. Does that mean that they might like to guide the larger project along?

I have to say I'm really pleased that everyone, and I mean everyone, is contributing something to the growth of the AVP. I sense that collectively we're weaving a strong social fabric here and that's more important than a few robots or a handful of 'executive' positions in some club. As Leo Buscaglia would say : "People before things" ( ...even in engineering). If we keep going on like this it should just be a matter of time before we get around the financial and technical obstacles currently in our way. So keep up the good work and let me know what you think. Have I forgotten anything?

Chris