Team Seventeen/Journal

Revision as of 18:42, 13 January 2014

This is our daily journal of progress, challenges, and other updates.

Week 1

1/6
We got a set of Kitbot parts! (Minus the battery.)
Vinay and Winter worked on assembling the Kitbot frame, having some difficulty finding appropriately sized screws and nuts.
Forest worked on assembling the wheels and motors.

1/7
The battery and a USB cable for connecting to the Maple arrived.
Forest connected most of the wiring between the motors, motor controllers, and Maple, and tied everything down.
Winter soldered the wires to the connecting pieces and to the motor. He uploaded the demo Kitbot code onto the Maple. Preliminary tests via serial commands from computer show that the electronics are working. We need to get the tablet part of the demo up and running.
Winter also tried to learn Solidworks. He is failing miserably slowly learning.
Forest and Vinay installed the software necessary to run the Kitbot from a laptop but didn't get it working on the tablet because of driver issues with the Maple.

1/8
Ariel gave a Power Electronics and Control Systems lecture. Apparently we will be using a PID controller, but the fastest way to get it working is just by fiddling with the three coefficients (proportional, then derivate, then integral).
Forest installed OpenCV on the tablet and tried but failed to configure it in Eclipse.
The tablet now works with the Maple.
Vinay installed Ubuntu on the tablet and the software for interfacing with the Maple. We can now run Kitbot using Ubuntu. The tablet is happy. Winter and Vinay thought about design ideas for collecting, storing, and depositing balls. We are thinking of using a wheel with a brush to scoop up balls to a higher platform, with some sort of switch to sort the balls, and maybe some internal color detection. Winter did a Solidworks checkoff and resoldered a new kitbot battery connector to the 'bot. Due to the new connector, we will no longer loose power to our robot while doing testing exercises. Winter also worked with Vinay on discussing possible plans for the mechanical version of the robot.
Our current conclusion is that we should aim to collect and deposit balls into the reactor silos at ground level first. Once we have a robot that can do that, we can expand the design to attempt some of the more complicated objectives. Yay K.I.S.S! (Keep it simple, stupid!)

1/9

There was a talk about how to generally use vision systems. Forest and Winter attended the lecture.
There was also a laser cutting training session. All of the team has now been trained to use the laser.

1/10 - Winter's Birthday!

We are falling behind on checkoffs. Although this was a ill-advised decision, 3/4 1/2 of our team is going on a ski trip for the weekend. However, Winter and Lucas are staying behind to continue working on the robot. In addition, Winter has been bogged down with 8.01L work. However, we were told by the staff that we can come in on Sunday to continue working. THERE IS STILL HOPE!

1/11

Nothing special happened. The lab was closed and half of the team was away.

1/12

The lab opened at 2PM today. Winter went to lab to try and get some preliminary designs done and lasercut before Monday.
The rest of the team returned from their ski vacation today and joined Winter in the lab. Together, we debated over various mechanical designs. Our current plan is to make a circular robot with a small ball intake in the front. Assuming that we will not have time to implement a mechanical ball sorter in the robot to filter out all the red balls, we want to make the vision system be our ball sorter. By having a small ball intake, we can presort the balls by only aiming for the green balls. It's not a perfect plan, but it's our best bet if we cannot get sorting finished in time.
For the elevation mechanism of the robot, we would like to make a belt and pulley driven mechanism.

1/13 - Monday! The day before our fist mock competition.

Today is the day before the first mock competition. Damage report: no vision yet, encoders are not yet running, mechanical parts have not been fully designed. We are going to need to step it up today and tonight to get something working by tomorrow.

This morning, Winter started making CAD assemblies of the ball elevator. A prototype of the elevator needs to be finished tonight to pass checkoffs.