By far the most important process of the engineering design process that I learned is to ALWAYS have a design created in CAD prior to working with physical material. In previous projects, I would often have an idea in mind and jump immediately to sourcing materials and assembling which would often result in me getting stuck on certain issues and never creating a functional product. With this project, I was able to model my idea prior to working with physical materials which ensured that I would have a functional prototype. 

After I was satisfied with the CAD model, I moved on to assembling the robot. I had to get rather creative at times when sourcing my materials, much of which came directly from my bed frame. I opted to use stepper motors to power the robot because of its precision and relatively simplicity to use. For the microcontrollers, I decided to use two Arduino Uno boards which served as the bridge between my python code on my laptop and the motor controllers. Assembly was a particularly difficult part of this project because I lived in an apartment and did not have access to any power tools at the time. This meant that everything had to be done with either a handsaw or a screwdriver.