LJ community, hear my prayer.
Well, not quite that bad. I've gotten all my approvals to do a survey and would like to see if anyone here believes they qualify to take a short survey of mine to help with my thesis.
I'm looking for people who were involved in selecting a robotic system for purchase (off the shelf or custom design from a contractor). Specifically, I'm looking at the relative importance and effectiveness of the engineering methods that were used to inform the decisions about which robot to purchase/design. I'm not looking into development practices, but rather the practices on the customer side.
What is acquiring?
- Buying a robot for a research lab that will have to host several different experiments (however, the experiments themselves aren't what I'm looking for) - e.g. recommending to your advisor to buy a pioneer robot because it is within price and you think it will best serve the lab's research needs for the next few years.
- Worked as a customer's acquisition engineering consultant/staff, advising management on which robot to buy to meet an organizational goal - e.g. recommending to management which competing explosive ordinance disposal robot to buy based on a cost-benefit trade-off.
Formality of the "acquisition" isn't the issue. Basically, if you've provided technical input as to which robot someone should buy, then you've got experience relevant to the survey.
If you can take the survey, feel free to
click here to take survey.
Survey results are anonymous to me (via SurveyMonkey functionality). You data will only be reported in aggregate with other respondents (anticipated minimum sample size is 20 respondents). No identifying information is collected (other than state/country, to see how wide the survey results cover) - no need to identify what project you were working on or what the specific requirements were.
Feel free to email or call me (or leave a comment here for me to contact you) if you have any questions.