Science Lab- Remote Repairs

For this lab my partners and I had to build robotic parts with only the descriptions our partners could give us. Our group had an extra challenge because one member had to leave early, so we were given twice the work.

We started out only being able to communicate using Google Chat and this made it very difficult. I struggled not with building the parts but understanding what was being said by my partners. There were a lot of misunderstandings and progress was very slow because we had to explain things step by step. But we came up with a genius idea: use iChat so we can use the video camera. As soon as we got a visual everything was much easy. There were less misunderstandings and we made much more progress! We couldn't build all of the parts that were given to us but I feel we did a good job under the circumstances; my group displayed an amazing amount of ingenuity by switching to iChat.

I think that this is an important lab because we may have to communicate with Mission Control using similar tools (AIM, Google Chat, or Video Talk. We may also need to do remote repairs if we send a robot to Mars.