Team Funskilled
About Us
Olivia Siegel: I am currently a sophomore studying Math with Computer Science. I am originally from Cambridge, MA, so I didn't travel too far to get to MIT. In addition to building a robot this IAP, I will spend my time cross-country skiing, playing poker, cooking, and watching movies. I've never applied by abilities to something like MASLAB before, so I am excited to see how our team learns and works together.
Clemmie Mitchell - I am a Senior from Scotland and I am studying Aerospace Engineering with the hopes of making it into space someday. I like and have experience with the mechanical aspect of robot design so I hope to help Team FUNskilled in that capacity. I am also excited to try out some of the Computer Vision stuff I have learned in Robotics and Controls classes I have taken along my MIT journey. When I am not MASLABing this IAP, you will catch me running on the track team, eating jelly-beans or trying to make it up to the mountains to climb or ski... or maybe in the Space Systems Lab building REIFSAT - a spinning aperture satellite that I have been working on with a small team for the past few months.
Elise McCormack - I am a sophomore from the coast of Maine studying mechanical engineering with a focus in propulsion systems, and trying (only somewhat successfully) to double major with electrical engineering. My dream is to be an inventor and start a company in military technology, or whatever catches my interest in the future. I’m also a thrower on the Track team and in my spare time I like to do art, various forms of fighting/martial arts, and outdoorsy stuff.
Abe Gertler
Alex Knapp - I am a junior majoring in course 16, aero/astro, and minoring in course 6. At MIT, I am also on the varsity track and cross country teams and I am a member of MIT’s Air Force ROTC program. Outside of running and school, I like to rock climb, snowboard and hike.
Week 1
Monday - Team got to know each other, talked about strategy ideas, and came up with important tasks to work on for week one.
Tuesday - Talked about methods for implementing strategies. Created team wiki page! Built mechanical components of the kitbot. Made some initial CAD designs for a ball pickup method and a conveyor belt/ramp aparatus to increase the potential energy of the balls once picked up.
Wednesday - Elise and Olivia soldered the Teensy to the male breakaway headers. Turns out we learned out lesson when the Teensy wasn't working-- it was because we had soldered the pins to each other and sort circuited the board. No biggie because we fixed our mistake the next day. Also we messed around with the NUC and the Teensy, to try and figure out how they all work together, but we didn't get very far.
Thursday - Finished the wiring on the kitbot. Can now get the wheels to spin but cannot figure out how to change the direction of the wheels.
Friday - We somehow got the bot to drive in a square. Turns out we needed to initialize the direction pins to output mode or something like that to change the wheel movement direction. There is zero complexity to our code for now, we just told the robot to drive straight for some amount of time, then turn for some amount of time, then repeat.
Week 2
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday- Alex got the encoders working, but is still trying to get the gyro to work. Abe got the parts list going and sent to Andrew. Clemmie got the CV going with Olivia.
Thursday
Friday
Week 3
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Week 4
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday