Month: November 2012

Attendance

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• Mark
• Evan
• Hunter
• Chris
• Dante
• Erik

Journal

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Tasks

• Fix the gears on the robot for the scissor lift
• Test the new gears

Reflections

Today we re-geared the robot from having a 1:2 ratio to having a 2:1 ratio, or the opposite of how we had it.  Since we only need to pick up rings that are very light, we did didn’t need to gear it down so we made it for speed.  We tested it and it did work, and it was faster, but not quite as fast as other robots may be, but we were fine with it because it would still allow us to get points.

Before:

After:

We continued to program the TeleOp and are still in the process of making all the bits in it work with the robot, specifically the servos.

Attendance

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• Mark
• Evan
• Hunter
• Chris
• Dante
• Erik
• Fletcher

Journal

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Tasks

• Reflect and perfect the changes done over the break
• These include enlarging the drive shaft, gearing down the motors, using a servo to move the hand left and right, and installing elastic bands

Reflections

Only a few adjustments were made over the break.  We took off the driving space on the top of the robot because we decided not to lift robots at this competition, and instead just stick to rings.  We geared down the motors that power the scissor lift and we made the drive shaft bigger.

In addition we replaced the single motor for each side with two for each side to increase the overall power of the lift.  We added more tension to the lift so it could go up easier.  We made the hand able to pick up 2 rings using metal pieces for it instead of Legos.  We employed surgical tubing to replace the string that moves the hand left and right.

We tested the robot today and it was able to drive and the scissor lift actually worked for the first time!  It went up to over 50 inches which is high enough to put rings on the top peg with our hand that can also swivel up and down.  Although excited that it could go a considerable height, it was too slow to be really effective in getting us a lot of points because we geared down the motors.  We resolved to fix this at the next meeting.

Attendance

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• Mark
• Evan
• Hunter
• Chris
• Dante
• Erik
• Fletcher

Journal

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Tasks

• Plan for how to use the sensors
• Program a lot for the autonomous
• Pack the robot to bring it home

Reflections

We brought the robot back to the school and worked a lot on programming because we needed to improve our autonomous and TeleOp.  We made some concept drawings for possible placement of sensors on the robot like IR, color, and weight sensors.  This was our last meeting before Thanksgiving break and we took the robot home again to make some adjustments to the lift.

Attendance

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• Mark
• Evan
• Hunter
• Chris
• Erik
• Fletcher
• Dante

Journal

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Tasks

• Modify the hand
• Test the scissor lift
• Adjust the main frame of the robot to suit our needs

Reflections

We brought the robot back and it was improved.  The frame was changed a little although just in its length one way.  We attempted to improve the hand by putting a light rubber band in between it to pull the sides together and grip the ring but it wasn’t able to move away from the middle, so we discarded the idea.  We also tried to test the scissor lift but it completely failed.  The motors were pulling too far to the sides and the motors themselves were not powerful enough to make the scissor lift go up so the motors started smoking and smelling and we stopped it immediately.  We realized many changes were needed to apply to the scissor lift.

Attendance

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• Evan
• Fletcher

Journal

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Tasks

• Work on the claw
• Help the other team

Reflections

Today was a Saturday build day at Evan’s house. We decided that all of the robot’s software files would be stored on Google drive so that one computer won’t have a more recent TeleOp or Autonomous than the rest of the computers.

Evan attached the claw on the robot. He also worked on machining a pulley mechanism so as to make it so our hand can move left and right.

Fletcher helped Amanda from The Kings and Queens (Team 4153) write an autonomous and a TeleOp. He for the most part wrote their TeleOp so as to demonstrate using the RobotC language. He then handed the computer to Amanda and guided her through writing an autonomous. This enabled her to finish her autonomous. They claimed that our team was both gracious and professional for doing this.