Throughout the beta segment of our project, we have been focusing on building our prototype and until very recently have not had it fully functional. While the stakeholders involved are mainly college students including us, we have taken many opportunities to share our progress with our peers. Showing our piers videos of the robot working and tracking people around leopard works has been positively received by everyone we have shown. People are genuinely interested in our project and the safety implications that it may have, especially after recent events on campus which have involved the police. When surveyed, 79.3% of participants said they would use our prototype if given the chance on campus and 84.5% of participants said that it made them feel safer. Once the robot was completed and is in its final form, we were able to take it to the streets and interact with more of the Lafayette student body while talking to them about the robot and its use cases.
Some of our other stakeholders include the college administration and professors, and during our Beta proposal presentation, we presented our robot to two mechanical engineering professors. Overall were extremely impressed with our robot, which unfortunately was not fully functional at the time due to a shattered drive gear. Luckily though, through videos we had taken during testing of the tracking and drive system working to follow a person in our lab, we were able to convey the effectiveness of those systems. The electrical system was fully functional during the presentation so we were able to present the working lighting system and sirens which also impressed the audience. We are looking forward to presenting our Safer Strides robot in more detail to more people during the design expo, and showing what our robot can do in person!