The main intrinsic problem encountered was the posed problem of turning the lights on. Each test unit contains a single switch which serves to turn the unit on. These switches are small black cuboids, which protrude from the bottom of the unit by approximately 1 to 2 mm. The mechanism of action of the switches is a linear, sliding motion, which requires approximately 3 N to activate on average, though a high variance was observed between test units.
The other intrinsic design problems are static, specifying the size of the robot, weight, and other factors; these can all be found in the original RFP, which can be found in Appendix \ref{app:rfp}. One notable constraint is the restriction on trays which have “fixed attachment”. This meant that the tray designed for the machine could not require the operator to use any significant force to insert the test units. This led to the tray being unable to apply significant downwards holding force on the lights. Further discussion on this topic can be found in the implementation section.