The first step for our team was understanding the task before starting to program so as to avoid useless and unstructured code. Because of this I created a basic flowchart[1] and wrote down all the main functions I would need to write.

Figure 1: Code Flowchart

With the flowchart done and the task firmly ingrained in our minds, my teammate and I started to write a couple of the main functions. Since my teammate was new to coding she needed help with her function so we went through her function together and debugged it. After we got the main functions working I then coded to rest of the functions[2] and tried the program out in Quanser’s interactive simulator[3].

Figure 2; Main Function that called the other functions

Figure 3: Quanser simulation running the code

After running it lots of times and verifying that it worked properly I decided to try to compete for the bonus in this course for our team. Given less then two hours I had to reprogram the code to work with a physical arm, autoclave, and our teams 3D printed container[4]. With a twenty minutes to spare I managed to get the physical system to work and our team received the bonus.

Figure 4: 3D printed model designed by the design sub-team

It was absolutely amazing seeing both sub-teams work on separate parts of the project and then watch them come together to complete the useful task of cleaning tools automatically.