Week 10

Successes

Mechanical

This week, we redesigned the launch bearing mount. We made it just a rectangular prism with a hole in the middle for a bearing, so there are less stress points. Additionally, we manufactured one out of metal as a backup for competition dayas. We also have finally achieved 100% consistent engagement with the hook, settling on a final design.

Electrical

We added two more cameras ( smart phones with google hangouts) to our system. One is used to further certify when a bean bag is correctly loaded into the launcher, and the other one is to aid in the avoidance of the competator robot during the transition stage of the competition.

Software

We modified our launch detection switch to only cause interrupts when the launch platform re-hooks to the pull carriage. This solved our issues with the launch system not working. We will rely on auditory feedback to determine when the pull direction should be reversed.

Integration

We had multiple successful tests before the competition and all subsystem working and interfacing with each other well. Also, the launch bearing mount no longer breaks catastrophically. This was achieved by making the bearing block more bulky (less stress concentrations), by slimming down the launch platform base (creating a slow creeping weak point instead of a catastrophic breaking point) and by swapping out our old breaker with a compression spring (creating less of an impact force when stopping the launch platform's motion). With these three changes we have not run into an issue yet.

We also went to the competition space this week before the competition to ensure that our robot could drive well on the competition floor. A video of that test is shown here.

Competition

The competition went very well, with the robot successfully throwing all three beanbags in each of its three matches. We had multiple cornholes, and took second place in the competition! Even though we were not the most easy to control robot, by having a reliable system that worked each time, allowed us to have this great success.

Challenges

Electrical

The day before the competition we had some wires short circuit. At first, we were worried we fried the pull motor, but thankfully all that was needed was to replace the wires connected the pull motor to the motor driver.

Mechanical

The launch bearing breaking was a significant challenge, as it would take a long time to print and then break right away. To fix this, we made it a rectangular prism instead of a cylinder on a plate. We also made a back up bearing mount out of metal just in case we couldn't get a printed one to work. Thankfully, the new one worked well.

Plan for Next Week

Next week we will dissassemble our robot and finalize this website!

Report abuse