Conclusions
The autonomous fishing rod our team designed and presented at demonstration day was a clean and functional project. Most of our expectations set at the beginning of the project were met with the combined skills, hard work, and communication from all of the team members. In the initial idea generation and proposal, our concept for the project was to build a fully autonomous fishing rod that casts and reels in the fishing line. However, due to time constraints, we as a group decided to narrow our focus for the scope of the project. The team wanted to focus on creating a smooth casting motion with the bait on the end of the line.
Lessons Learned
Group 09 had five members in the group, we had to develop clear and efficient communication through weekly meetings and constant messaging with updates and ideas on the project. The delegation of tasks allowed for each member to display their strengths and skills for a better project. With our group having five members, at times it was difficult to gather all members so we had to develop time management skills to ensure the group completed tasks before and during meetings to remain on schedule.
Future Work
In the completed build assembly, a green button is included in the box design and is connected to the circuit. The green button did not have a function during demonstration day, however, in the future this button could be programmed to reel in the line after the fishing rod is cast. Other work in the future is redesigning the output link to not be a rigid acrylic link and instead more closely resemble a typical fishing rod with some bending in the line to better simulate the motion of a fishing rod. Due to limited time, our group was unable to scale up the size of the fishing rod from the prototype design. In the future, the autonomous fishing rod will be a more accurate scale of standard commercial fishing rods.
Tips for Future Groups
The first tip our group would like to strongly emphasize for other groups is begin working on this project as soon as possible. More time to work on the project allows for a better final product. Another tip is to pick a project that the group has genuine interest in, do not just pick something just because you see it online and it is easy to replicate. Our group was interested and learned from this project because we had to figure out how to incorporate different mechanisms to create a functional fishing rod.
Acknowledgments
Our group would like to thank TIW and the student workers for helping our group when we needed tools or aid with the laser cutters. We would also like to thank Joe from TIW for cutting our shafts for the bearings. And lastly, our group would like to thank Connor Hennig for helping our group and giving helpful advice and notes on our fishing rod design during our weekly check-ins.
