Ethical Considerations




Our work on this project has attempted to be fully consistent with the IEEE Code of Ethics. The following are some additional comments on a few of the ten points in the Code.

We have taken the responsibility to ensure that the product of our design and our design process have set out to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of ourselves and those around us. In consideration of this goal, we have avoided any attempt to work with dangerous voltages or currents, taken care that our work with potentially dangerous equipment (such as soldering irons) is done in a safe manner, and always made sure to clean up our lab area of our project and any scrap components when finished working.

Any claims that we have made of our design's performance are based on fact and our systematic analyses. We have made and continue to make no guarantees regarding the performance of our design or regarding our design's suitability for any particular purpose. We acknowledge that there are known bugs that can cause erratic behavior in our design, as well as the potential for unknown bugs that may detrimentally affect our design's performance. However, we believe that the scope of potential problems with our design is not likely to compromise the safety of any person or the operation of any external equipment.

Throughout our design process, we have attempted to improve the understanding of technology for ourselves and for others. We have generated algorithms to accomplish different functions of our game, and have programmed these in a manner consistent with the programming techniques with which we are familiar. Similarly, we have incorporated into our design a variety of circuits that we use to generate desired hardware response. In using and documenting both our hardware and software designs, we have improved our understanding of these designs, as well as the technologies behind them.

During our entire design process, we have made use of the available knowledge of our professor, teaching assistants, and classmates in an attempt to seek honest assistance and criticism of all aspects of our design. Whenever an error was pointed out we sought to correct the problem and whenever a better alternative to a component of the design was suggested, we sought to incorporate it into our design. Furthermore, we have attempted to give proper credit to all sources that we used in our design. By submitting our project for grading, we further seek assistance and criticism in all aspects of our design.

Finally, we attempted to extend to others our understanding of the IEEE code. While working on our project, we assisted our classmates in their development and design processes. We shared relevant information that was helpful for others to construct working projects, and tried to ensure that we used only our fair share of lab time and resources to ensure that others had an equal opportunity to complete their designs on schedule.