Poseidon (Swim Pacer)

Project Overview

Objective: Work in teams of 15-20 students to design and build a working alpha prototype for a new product launch

Role: Galvo-laser subsystem design, wiring, programming, and machining, whole product CAD modeling & rendering, final technical presenter

Skills: Opportunity identification, Requirements Gathering, Prototyping, CAD modeling, Machining, Programming, Electronics/Circuits, Technical presenting

Result: Delivered working prototype and business plan for product launch demo in front of live audience of 1,100 people with 40,000 more livestreaming

Project Description

The senior capstone class for MIT undergraduate mechanical engineering students is Product Engineering Processes. Students work in large teams of approximately 15-20 individuals to design and build working alpha prototypes of new products. Students learn about creativity, product design, teamwork, and working within a budget in a unifying engineering experience. The course is designed to emulate what engineers might experience as part of a design team in a modern product development firm. The effort spans the early phases of product development, including: opportunity identification; generating ideas; gathering customer and market data; selecting ideas, devising concepts and building sketch models; building and testing mockups; customer evaluation of mockups; embodiment design; and construction of a high-quality functioning alpha prototype. At the end of the course, teams present their work to a live audience of ~1100 practicing product designers, entrepreneurs, academics, and classmates, as well as a significant live webcast audience—in the tens-of-thousands.

Our product was Poseidon, a self-contained pacing system designed for swimmers and triathletes. Once mounted to the side of the pool, Poseidon projects a laser that moves along the bottom of the pool at the user's desired pace. This provides the user with a consistent target to chase while training. The inspiration for Poseidon came from watching the world record line during the Olympics. It's an interesting situation where the viewers at home can see the CGI line live during the race; however, the athletes in the race cannot. We thought, what if we could create a product that allowed the athletes to see these target line while training/competing? If you could see how close you were to setting a personal best or a world record, wouldn't that give you the motivation to dig a little deeper and push yourself that much harder?

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