We started the week by preparing for our halves presentation. The team worked on creating and polishing the slides, drafting a script, and rehearsing to make sure we could present our progress within the 10-minute time limit.

Last week, we started a slide deck and asked all team members to add their content by Saturday night. We then discussed the flow of the presentation and organized the slides in the right order. Each team member was assigned a section to work on and present during the halves presentation.

On Monday, we held our first rehearsal at RPIS. One of our biggest challenges was presenting our premise, progress, and next steps in exactly 10 minutes. We spent time deciding how much time each section needed and figuring out how to explain the important details without going over the time limit.

On Tuesday morning, we presented our slides to Shirley and Vivian for feedback. They suggested reorganizing some slides, adding or removing details, including more visuals, and polishing our script. Their feedback helped us revise the presentation and communicate our progress more effectively without missing important details. We rehearsed again later that day, focusing on where each person would stand and how we would hand off between speakers. By the end of the day, we had polished and submitted our presentation.

On Wednesday at 4:25 p.m., we finally presented our halves presentation! The format was different from previous semesters. This time, all teams presented on the same day, with 10 minutes allocated to each team and no questions at the end. It was a good opportunity to share our progress and explain where we were headed next.

On Thursday morning, we met with our instructors to discuss their feedback and address any final concerns before our experience playthrough. Overall, the team had done well. We mostly met expectations, with a few areas exceeding them, which was encouraging! 

The rest of Thursday was spent preparing for Friday’s faculty playthrough. We put up temporary cardboard pieces in the robot room to demonstrate our set design, dressed up the robot to give it a sense of character and costume, and added some cardboard props. We also tested XR teleoperation and the robot’s audio to make sure everything worked as expected. Finally, we planned how to run the experience, assigning responsibilities such as onboarding guests, playing the character of Joe, and teleoperating the robot.

On Friday, we held our faculty playthrough. Everything went according to plan, and we received great feedback from the faculty. It was exciting to see our ideas coming together and to feel the enthusiasm from both the team and our faculty as we move closer to our final experience.

Next week is Fall Break, and the team is looking forward to taking a little time off and recharging after a busy week. Once we return, we expect to move into an all-hands-on-deck phase, with everyone actively working on set design, fabrication, costumes, props, programming, and finalizing our experience and narrative.

That’s all for this week! Have a fun and relaxing Fall Break, everyone. See you in two weeks!