Team Two/Journal

Contents 1 Day 1 (January 7) 2 Day 2 (January 8) 3 Day 3 (January 9) 4 Day 4 (January 10) 5 Day 5 (January 11) 6 Day 6 (January 12) 7 Day 7 (January 14)

Day 1 (January 7)

• Lecture 1 gave us an introduction to MASLab.
• Lecture 2 was an introduction to programming our robos

• The best part was the lab:
• 1. We assembled the PegBot.
• 2. Coded the robot using Arduino to move at various speeds and directions.
• 3. Didn't face any problems yet, except that the left wheel is a bit too close to the body of the bot. Didn't affect the movement much at high velocities.

Hungry for more!

Day 2 (January 8)

• The lectures were on sensors and algorithms.

• Our MechE member received Edgerton Shop training today.
• We fixed the issue with the wheel scraping the pegboard.
• We discussed the design of the end effectors.
• We also discussed the general scoring strategy.

Day 3 (January 9)

• Another team member got shop trained today. Added helping hand!
• Today was planning day. The following plans were laid out:
• 1. We planned our calendar. We have decided to have the robot mechanically ready by week 3. In the mean time, our coders will decode the mysteries of image processing and mapping algorithms. Post week 3 will mostly be debugging time.
• 2. We finalized our team strategy: Grab, collect, store and go for the pyramid. Aim for the wall only if we start running out of time.
• 3. Our MechE designed the robot on SolidWorks and our bot looks mean.
• 4. We designed the state machine; foolproof as of now!

Day 4 (January 10)

• Lecture was on mechanical design.
• We finished half of the mechanical design details.
• We transitioned from Arduino to Python.
• We started using openCV to handle vision. We were able to filter out colors in HSV.

Day 5 (January 11)

• Craziest day till now.
• We burnt our Arduino board and our Motor Controller.
• This made us rebuild the bot from the scratch.
• The outcome was a bot with clean circuitry and added mechanical stability.
• The original caster wheel was acting crazy so we replaced it with a ball caster.
• Got the bot to follow a red ball.

Day 6 (January 12)

• We finally figured out the nuances of OpenCV.
• Calibrating the camera seems so easy now.
• Bot now follows any specified color and under any lighting condition.

Day 7 (January 14)

• Mock competition 1
• Ok so the bot follows a ball now what?
• We finalized our bot's explore state --> wall following
• Used two IR sensors and a bump sensor to maintain the bot in a state of exploration.
• Bot starts with a button start and stops after 3 minutes.
• We were happy with how the bot performed.
• The main take away message for us was: sensors are really important; use them wisely to keep the bot from getting stuck.