At the beginning of the capstone project cycle, we were given our task by our client. Build an elctronic prosthetic for a young boy that is missing his left arm from the elbow down. The requirements that we were given for the project Our team was formed from Northern Arizona University Electrical Engineering students with the want to change the world.
In the first phase of the project, we conducted research on various prosthetics and internal systems that we thought would be useful in understanding how to complete the project. Gathering the research conducted by each group member, we were ready to begin the prototyping stage of the project after the conclusion of winter break.
Phase II of the project began at the beginning of the spring semester. We had been making excellent progress on the project and staying on track with out Gantt Chart, figuring out diffect subsystems of the arm and how we would implement them into our final design. However with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, complication after complication began to arise in our work.
Phase III was conducted almost entirly online due to social distancing advisement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of being able to work side by side on every aspect of the project, we now needed to switch to doing work from home utilizing Discord and Zoom to conduct meetings and working on assignments via Google Docs.
During the final phase of the project, an unfortunate realization had dawned upon our team. Due to the delay in our parts order and the amount of time remaining in the semester, we would be unable to deliver a finished product. After this realization, we did not give up. This only strengthened our resolve to deliever as much of a completed product as we much of a completed product as possible and document as well as we could so that next years group of engineers would be able to complete what we were unable to.
