Conclusion questions:
1) Describe the objectives for this project in your own words:
The objective for our project was to create a robot arm that would have 3 different degrees of freedom. The base would need to rotate, the arm to move up and down, and the claw to open and close. It would need to be remotely controlled as in a real situation, it would be in a "sterile environment".
2) What were the most difficult parts of the problem? Describe the difficulties you had with these things:
The most difficult part for us was the base, this is because the way it was in the design provided no stability to the rest of the arm. This required us to completely change the base design, which in turn, provided more stability. Another problem was the way the original code was written. The original code required too much and too complicated input from the user, so it was not very user friendly. We ended up just re-writing the code to make it easier for the user to use.
3) List and describe two features that were not part of the design problem that could be added to improve your design:
One thing we could have added to our robot was some sort of wheels for the arm to roll on. These wheels would help support the robot arm and spread out the weight of it across the base. This would help to increase the stability of the robot to make it function easier. x
4) Describe how your design and program worked during the official test? Was you design successful? Why or why not:
Both the design and the code worked perfectly as expected (which was well) during our official presentation. Our robot did everything it was tasked to do, with no errors and no problems. The robots previous stability issue was fixed, and nothing went wrong during the official test.
5) Describe some things you learned during this project:
I learned how to better optimize the use of the parts that we have available from the VEX kits, and other materials we had available. I also learned some techniques on how to build more complex working robots to complete a given goal. This project tested us, throwing us new obstacles to solve, as we had never before build a complicated robot like this. I really enjoyed this project and cannot wait to keep exploring more of the abilities of the VEX kit.
This was the first sketch was my original design sketch that I came up with. There was 2 limit switches to rotate the arm around, 2 more limit switches to make the arm move up and down, and 2 bump switches to control the opening and closing of the claw. Each function has 2 switches so the user can easily operate the machine with no trouble.
The second sketch was the final design we decided on (we choose Prathik's design) using the decision matrix. This design would have 2 bump switches that would control the base rotation, and 2 potentiometers, one for the up and down arm movements, and another for the claw.
Once one of the two limit switches is pressed, it will either open or close the claw. The bump switches control the arms movement either left or right. The potentiometer controls the arms up and down motion. The disk on the back is used as a counter weight to the arm, and we have a total of 3 motors in use. One to control the arms base, another for the arm joint, and the last for the motion of the claw. Our sensors were a potentiometer, two limit switches, and two bump switches.