Arms Race

Today our working design is due; it must be coded and be able to pick up a ring. Our grabber design is finished, so now its just a race against the clock to get an arm working so that our grabber can actually reach the rings.

Like a moth to the flame...

Casey finished coding for our IR (infrared) sensor on the robot. Now, as you will see, Sonic will circle while searching for the IR beacon and then drive and follow the beacon once it is found.

Sonic will use this IR sensor to identify the column with the IR beacon in the challenge. Now we have to finish and code our arm design so that Sonic can place the ring on the correct column without any human control; i.e. autonomously.

Invisible Sun

This picture shows the beacon and IR light that Sonic follows while in autonomous. This light is invisible to the human eye, but electronic cameras, such as the one that took this picture, and electronic sensors can see and follow this light.

Bodybuilding

Nik is working on the Solidworks model of our arm for Sonic. Once we have our model, we can build the arm and test it out.

Organization

Organizing our parts in order to take inventory and figure out which parts we need to order. This is important  as Lego and Tetrix parts are not cheap, so we can only order what is necessary.

Yours, mine, and ours

Today we combined our ring grabbing system and our ring release system, finding the two to work almost perfectly together. With some design modifications to improve performance, this system will work beautifully to grab and place rings.

This

+

This

=

20% Cooler

And They're Off!

After being operational for a week, our robot finally got graded for being able to move. While the other groups scrambled to get theirs moving, Casey just loaded up last year's program and got a grade so we could get on with building; it's awesome to be ahead of the game!

Don't let Nik use the drill press!!

You hear that, everyone??? So it has been written, so it shall be. Maybe I'm just no good with power tools; or, maybe it's the drill press' fault. Yup: definitely the press. Whatever the case, looks like someone else is going to have to machine the plexiglass, and I'm going to get out of the machine shop before I cause any more damage!

What could possibly go wrong?

...close enough...