Due Thursday, February 10
Overview
Once you have formed your group, it is time to choose your project. Each team is required to write a proposal over their top project choice. Proposals will cover what you are interested in, why you want to work on that project, and how you will carry out the project’s development and evaluation. Proposals are competitive; the team with the best proposal for a given project will be assigned that project.
Purpose
Each proposal will serve as your bid for a given project. Just as with industry, teams that write the best proposals receive the contracts for the projects. It is therefore important to take these proposals seriously. Leaving out sections or glossing over important details will result in point deductions and reduce your chances of working on your desired project.
Proposals are your way to prove that you deserve the opportunity to develop your ideas based on the given project. Argue for your team and idea while remaining accurate and within scope. Take into account the amount of time you will have to work on your project, and choose ideas that fit within this timeframe.
Format
All team proposals should be written in 12-point Arial font, single spaced, single columned, and have one inch margins. Each team proposal should be 4.5-6 pages in length. The default proposals should include the following main sections:
Introduction and Motivation: (0.5 pages)
- Which project has your team chosen?
- Why do you want to work on this project?
- Explain the importance of your proposed design.
- Provide a general overview of your development tasks and their breakdown.
- Provide the answers to any project-specific questions.
- Explain initial architecture and its components.
- For each team member, list relevant prior coursework, experience, and programming languages/toolkits that qualify you for this project.
- What contribution can each of you make to this project?
- Intellectual Merit - How important is the proposed activity to advancing knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields? To what extent does the proposed activity suggest and explore creative and original concepts?
- Broader Impact - How well does the activity advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning? How well does the proposed activity broaden the participation of underrepresented groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, disability, geographic, etc.)? To what extent will it enhance the infrastructure for research and education, such as facilities, instrumentation, networks, and partnerships? Will the results be disseminated broadly to enhance scientific and technological understanding? What may be the benefits of the proposed activity to society?
- What hardware will you be using out of the supplied list for this project? Justify your selection.
- What additional hardware is desired by your project team? Justify your selection. Make sure that your project can function without these additions as they may not be obtainable.
- What software libraries/toolkits will you be using for this project? Justify your selection.
Make sure to include any and all project-specific proposal requirements as listed on the project outline pages!
Grading Rubric
Proposals will be graded on how well they follow the above format and on their content. The proposed designs should be both challenging and practical given the timeframe of the semester. Proposals that lack clear research benefits will lose points. Refer to the project pages in order to get a starting point for the potential benefits of your project.