WATonomous picks up speed in fourth year
The Math Faculty did an expo on the team in 2020: WATonomous picks up speed in fourth year (uwaterloo.ca)
Rowan Dempster, a fourth-year Computer Science student who serves as the co-captain of WATonomous, has witnessed the journey from the beginning. “We placed in the middle of the pack in the first year of the competition, but the second year was marked by failure caused by transitions in technical and leadership staff,” he shares. Though one of Waterloo’s greatest strengths, its co-op culture has produced a revolving door of students that makes consistency difficult to achieve for the WATonomous team. Confronted by the challenge of coordinating a shifting staff of 50 to 100 students at a time, the team rarely made it to the test track during its second year of operations.
During their third year, Dempster and his team members implemented a more effective chain of command and put a defined work plan in place. Each member of WATonomous invests eight to ten hours a week or more, with work sessions throughout the week depending on their division. They gather for all-team meetings twice a month and hit the test track on alternate weeks. While they only have up to six months of ideal testing conditions given the length of winter, they take advantage of every opportunity to test out their product.