Team Eight/Journal

Revision as of 21:48, 18 January 2013

Monday 1/7/13

Today we went to two lectures. We were informed of the rules of the competition and went over some basic python software. During our lunch break we devised our initial strategy and robot mechanisms. We are planning to use a conveyer belt and spinning ball collector. In lab we assembled our pegbot, and Laura got the code to work, while Bee and Ryan were at wrestling practice. We are excited for this class.

Tuesday 1/8/13

Today we had two lectures on connecting the Arduino and protoboard as well as working with the sensors and actuators. During the break between lectures we outlined the necessary states for the state machine and continued designing the robot mechanisms. In lab, we affixed the IR sensor to the front of the robot and coded the robot to sense a wall and turn away for checkpoint two. In the evening we detailed the robot mechanisms and started CADing the robot. We also calculated the necessary dimensions of the conveyor belt and other critical parts. Bee worked on the openCV vision system software and Ryan and Laura worked on CAD.

Wednesday 1/9/13

In the morning we had a lecture on vision systems and different image processing algorithms. After lecture Laura and Ryan worked more on the robot CAD. We wrote a schedule for the rest of the month, and designed the critical parts of the robot. In the afternoon we learned about PID control and mapping. We ran into some issues about where best to place the conveyor belt motors and servo , and brainstormed solutions to fix it.

Thursday 1/10/13

Today's only lecture was about mechanical design. After an epic start of the day post lecture, which included a trip to Mt. Auburn, we returned to work on the robot. We also went over some of the previous competitors to highlight some successful strategy, design, and implementation. Ryan and Laura continued to CAD a complete model, while Bee worked on OpenCV and python. The CAD model should be done soon so that we can begin piecing the robot together. The vision code is now able to detect red objects by filtering a webcam image into the HSV color space, then filtering out colors that do not match our desired range. This code has been made into a library that outputs the x,y position of the object it sees to our main program.

Friday 1/11/13

We did not have any lecture today, so we went straight to lab to continue working on the robot. Ryan, a newly minted Solidworks hold wizard, continued to CAD, while Laura and Bee worked on the code. We tested the different states/tasks that the robot needs to complete checkpoint 4. Laura wrote an open loop code that allows the robot to scan for the ball by spinning in a circle and center the ball in its field of vision when a ball is detected. Bee developed a camera calibration system that adjusts the HSV color values due to lighting and different colors for checkpoint 5. Although the camera is picking up some noise from the background colors which we need to work on filtering. According to Ryan, the CAD is "doneish."

Saturday 1/12/13

We spent today preparing to laser cut out potential final robot design. Unfortunately, we were unable secure a laser cutter today and was unable to cut our pieces. Instead, we went to Economy Hardware and found screws, bolts, and other misc items for building. Ryan and Laura spent the rest of the day finalizing the CAD model for laser cutting.

Sunday 1/13/13

Today we went to the CSAIL machine shop to laser cut our pieces. Thanks a million to Affi for helping us set up the laser cutter and to layout our pieces. Our first piece we set the laser speed too fast so the pieces didn't cut the whole way through. We tried to extract the pieces by hammering them out, but unfortunately cracked the base. So we decided to re-cut that sheet as we had an extra acrylic sheet. We decided to cut the two top pieces of the clear blue acrylic and the sides out of the grey.

Monday 1/14/13

Today is the first Mock Competition. We tried as best as we could to get a working robot, but was unsuccessful. We forfeited any attempt to try to score and instead focused on assembling the final robot. We went to Edgerton shop to drill and tap the attachment holes in the acrylic. From a preliminary assembly, it's looking good so far. Tomorrow we will attempt the software design again.

Tuesday 1/15/13

We finished drilling and countersinking the robot pieces and assembled the acrylic robot. Then we transfered all the parts from the pegbot to our actual robot. The wheels are a little too wide for the space allotted so we had to file down part of the walls and tested using different wheels. We also realize we need more 6-32 x1/2 screws. From now we will use our actual robot to code and test.

Wednesday 1/16/13

It snowed today! It was very pretty, but this Californian was cold unlike her two teammate who are from naturally colder places. As for MASLAB, we found more 6-32 screws and assembled the robot. Then we removed the parts of the wall that interfered with the walls and switched out the original wheels to fit larger green rubber wheels. Then we machined more parts to fit the servo drive, and mocked up the rubber band wheels for ball collection. There were major alignment issues, and cardboard was discovered to not be a bad medium for sketch modeling out robot. Code-wise, vision code was updated and run code now is a state machine.

Thursday 1/17/13

Ryan and Bee are off the dominate their wrestling tournament for the weekend, while Laura is left to dominate robot building. Well sorta. Two ideas for fixing the rubber band wheel drive include: 1) Threaded rod 8mm x 1.25: set screw attachment to motor, use nuts and lock tight to hold rubber band wheel position. Though we'd have to order it and it wouldn't come until next week. 2) Or a Hex rod (Thanks Fred!) and e-clips (or maybe just epoxy).
We also are thinking about implementing optical encoders on the drive wheels to drive with PID control to help with driving more accurately.

Friday 1/18/13

Still on my own as Bee and Ryan are still out wrestling in Georgia. I added cardboard ramps to the robot and had the crazy idea that if I could use the servo to raise the ramp I could collect balls onto the back without a rubber band roller. But the servo range wasn't great enough for the ramp slope to be any steeper than about 1 degree, and balls couldn't really roll up onto it without a roller anyway. So crazy idea = fail. Moving on, I edited the camera calibration to better recognize balls in 26-100 lighting. Assembled robot and mounted battery, IR sensor, and computer. Updated the code to use IR sensor. The robot weight distribution is off because of the missing conveyor belt. Also the robot overall is very heavy and doesn't drive well. Motors are stripping and the gearbox is coming apart.