Weekly Accomplishments (11/25) - Autonomous completed, need bumper switch

The Autonomous portion of the challenge has been completed. The theoretical programs worked pretty good, for the most part, but there was still some customization needed (reduce that time a little bit, raise that time, reduce the power of the claw tightening, etc). Not only that, I found out that the some of the motors were either reversed or underpowered. I had to cut the power of the right motor in half so that it wouldn't overpower the left motor and drift off-course. It was long and tedious, but we finally managed to make it in whatever box we wanted about 90% of the time.



Besides the Autonomous, minor mechanical errors had to be corrected. Sometimes the axles on the gear tower were unaligned, or sometimes the string would get in the way of the claw, and we'd have to untangle it and clean it up. All that's needed now is to attatch a bumper switch to the robot so that it reverts to manual control once the Autonomous program has run its course.



Weekly Accomplishments (11/22) - Autonomous well on its way

Good news, our autonomous is well on its way to completion. That robot in the picture isn't actually ours, but I've run extensive diagnostic tests to see exactly how fast the robot moves at full battery. The results:
Forward/backward: 13 inches per second
90 degree turn: 1.9 seconds
Claw rise/lower: 3.5 seconds
Of course, these results are all approximate, because it may not be the same fully charged battery every time, there could be mechanical errors that need fixing, etc. But it's a good estimation, and the courses should only require slight modification, depending on the box the program is directing the robot to.

Weekly Goals (11/18 - 11/22) - Robot done; need Autonomous and SolidWorks

Turns out that both the Autonomous and SolidWorks still need to be completed. I'm beginning to make real headway into learning how to program ROBOTC, and once I understand it sufficiently, I can start planning out the route, writing test programs and doing diagnostics. *no screenshot, sorry*

Meanwhile, the SolidWorks is also coming along for Nick. We hope to have everything done by next Tuesday a week from now.

Weekly Accomplishments (11/15) - Nothing but ROBOTC left

For the last week, our team has been fighting a war on two fronts: the pull up challenge and the cube challenge.

In the pull up challenge, we've finally managed to have our robot complete the task consistently without some gear or axle snapping out of place. And better yet, it can lift itself at least a few inches off the ground.

Yesterday, Nick programmed the controller for the manual portion part of the challenge. On Wednesday, I stayed a couple of hours after school to plot out the autonomous course of our robot in the cube challenge. One of my teacher's former students came in an suggested a simpler route: starting directly parallel to the boxes, the four programs will turn at differing times (depending on he cube), turn back on course and do a U-turn to climb the ramp - all within 30 seconds.

On that day, I realized that we would have to replace the robot's brain. When new ROBOTC firmware is put in the brain, it's supposed to purge any old remnant programs. We put a few commands into the brain, but when we tested it, our robot started twitching and moving forward without any programming telling it to do so. The programming will have to be finished next week.

Weekly Goals (11/12 - 11/15): Robot Pull-up and ROBOTC

As explained last week, we are still taking on two things at once: the robot pull-up challenge and the cube-placement challenges. The robot pull-up challenge will be finally attempted on the same day as the other challenge, and it doesn't require any Autonomous, so we'll be ready for that when our robot can physically do it (enough torque, sturdy axles, etc).



The cube-placement challenge is already halfway-completed. We've tested our claw without any Autonomous and it preformed sufficiently. All that's left to do is to program the Autonomous. Starting from a fixed location in the arena, our robot automatically place in a cube in one of four randomly chosen boxes on the balancing beam. I will write up four programs on ROBOTC, one for each box, and when the chosen box is revealed, we'll take a few minutes to load the respective program onto the robot's brain and then trigger it via bumper switch in the arena.

Weekly Accomplishments (11/8): Robot Pull-up & Extension

Today, our team learned that it's being granted an extension by the teacher. This is likely resulting from the fact that we only have three people officially on our team while the other two teams have six or seven each. We have until the end of the extension to complete both the robot pull-up challenge an the cube challenge, which will be done on the same day.

We have made significant headway in the robot pull-up challenge: the string is attached to an additional motor and it succeeded in pulling our robot off the ground (albeit barely).

However, after some tweaking, the robot failed the second test. The axles on the tower kept coming undone, and many other things were suddenly loose, so we have to fix them next week. And I still have to program ROBOTC....

Weekly Goals (11/4 - 11/8): Two Challenges at Once

This week, two challenges will be attempted at once. Along with the current challenge of using the claw to drop cubes into boxes, we'll be revisiting the previous challenge from a few weeks ago (the robot bar pull-up). It's quite late, but we need a grade for it.


















This structure will be placed alongside the current end effector and a string will be tied to both it and the robot's frame. A motor  on the arm will reel in the string, effectively lifting the entire robot.

Weekly Accomplishments (11/1): Torque and Claw

This week, we have completed our robot, for the most part. First of all, we've added torque to the tower - a lot more torque.

 

The claw is our new end effector and it has proven itself capable of lifting cubes in the arena. Of course, there is a motor attached to the claw (so it can move), and we've added an extension to the wire coming from the motor so it can go straight to the tower without getting caught in anything. Oh, and the armor surrounding the brain is still there from the last challenge - there is still the danger of the claw falling down hard on the brain.

Other than that, the only thing left for this challenge is for me to figure out how to program VEX. That's right: I'm in charge of the Autonomous aspect of the challenge. Oh boy.