Introduction
Each major project we are tracking will receive a subpage for this cycle. Begins roughly end of May 2024 and ends after AEAC 2025 competition. Philosophy is spawned from AEAC 2024 competition debrief: 2024-06-04 Competition Debrief #2 . We are also considering SUAS 2025 competition as a possible path for this cycle in addition to numerous R&D projects!
High Level Direction
Modularity: focus on common mounting solutions and existing standards for electronics and software so our system can adapt easily to new requirements and objectives.
An example of achieving this is Mounting Hole & Patern Specifications and Frame Design requirements.
Testing: testing new systems early and often has been extremely beneficial for us, let's keep this going for every subsystem! See Iterative Design Process for more details.
Competition Advantage: if a project never has a path toward offering us an advantage at competition. Projects should be pursued for learning of course and moonshot ideas can be pursued as long as there is some path, even a long term path, for viability.
Note this does imply sunsetting the ZP program (see 2024-06-01 EFS Director Sync ) and switching strategies for tracking antenna (see Tracking Antenna Long Term Vision ).
Affordable/Repairable: We will be crashing, let's keep stuff affordable, use budgeting effectively.
Architecture Documents Direction
Avoid the formality in architecture information to maximize editability and usefulness.
Subteam leads are expected to guide members through projects, not the architecture documents themselves.
The target audience and contributors is leadership so no need to go into significant specificity.
Only spend your time writing these architecture documents documenting details that need to be present to ensure all of leadership understands our plans.
If a detail is obvious to all of leadership then it does not need to be documented. As a lead your time is valuable, spend it leading your subteam, not writing useless documents.
Programs