Team Eight/Journal

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.