10/15/16
Over the past couple of weeks, we have made great progress as well as gained a few team members. The first thing we were able to accomplish was getting a perfected base. We decided to continue using our base from last year. However, we realized that the structure had a critical imperfection. The spacing between the two bars of the wheels was uneven on the right side. We fixed this by unscrewing the plaque that was holding our base together and replacing the bar that was uneven. Eventually, we were able to get it perfected.
The next thing that we accomplished was mounting the motor to the side of our carwash. In the past, we were attempting to mount a motor with a small diameter attached to a small gear. However, Robin pointed out that if we mount a larger gear to the small gear, we would be able to generate more revolutions per second of the carwash. After doing some additional calculations, we realized that we should mount a larger gear to our motor.
After mounting our power distribution module(PDM) and our motor control, we decided to take the robot for a test drive. By doing so, we encountered a small problem...
As seen from the video above, there was grinding between the gears of the wheel and the motor controlling the wheels. This was problematic because this meant our robot was not moving as fast as it could potentially be moving. We investigted into the issue and realized that the gears weren't tightened completely and realized that the gears were already damaged. We fixed this issue and got the robot working.
Meanwhile, our programming lead, Rohit Shankar, was able to finally able to operate the color sensor through our android phone. This was essential for our robot as we were focusing on hitting all the color sensors during autonomous to gain the maximum number of points. This allowed for our programming team to begin coding the eventual servo mount.
The final thing we were able to accomplish was prototyping the arm. We decided to use tetrix arms linked to another arm with a bungee cord.
While testing the catapult, we realized that we needed a perpedicular tetrix bar to stop the bar once it reached a 90 degree angle. If this wasn't done, the ball in the catapult would propel straight downward as there wasn't a force opposite the arm to prevent it from releasing from the catapult. We could also manipulate this bar and place it at several different angles to shoot at different angles.
Written by: Abhi B, Micheal, and Rohit