What the Robots have been Up To

I don't do robotics posts every week, but that does not mean there are not things going on.  This is our fall "pre-season" where we try things and people out.  It's all just putting together complicated things whether it is a working group of students or a prototype mechanism.  

The team is growing, in fact growing faster than I can really keep up.  We are a bit like the French Foreign Legion.  Recruits come to us.  We don't ask too many questions, just start training them.  Somewhat more realistically this means that current team members are inviting their friends to come aboard.    

A few random images....

The hand-eye-brain-intuition aspects of driving can only be learned by lots of practice.  Every session, even though it is perhaps six months from competition and three months before we are told what we'll be building.....drive practice.  We use a variety of test bases and try to make it realistic.  In this case, push that rolling object up that ramp that you can't see, using only camera control.

Our biggest shortcoming in seasons to date has been object handling mechanisms.  So one of my personal priorities has been to get a dedicated sub team of prototypers going.  Here we have a pneumatic rotary actuator that was donated to us.  The plan was to make a simple device that could deploy a mechanism in and out of the frame perimeter, perhaps a ball intake with belts and such.  They got that done nicely.  Only to discover that the actuator had way more power than anticipated (59 foot pounds at 60 psi).  After using it once or twice as an impromptu catapult (another reasonable thing to create) it taught us something important.  The 3D printed adapter, even though it was made of carbon fiber material, was not strong enough and stripped out right away.  If we use this it will require a fancy metal adapter....

Prototyping has also been working on intake gizmos.  This wood built prototype uses special directional wheels to pull the ball to the center and then in.  The impact driver has a socket they can use to drive the hex shaft, but by end of session they were close to slapping a chain drive onto it.

Software has been huddled down of late.  The problems of figuring out the complex omni directional swerve drive are significant.  They'll get it pretty soon.

The media/pr sub team has cooked up some early T shirt designs, and is working on assorted other things.  Visitors coming in, team going on outreach visits.  Even some discussion of a musical ensemble.  Mostly to provide music for team video productions, but I did task them with learning taps for when we have the traditional ceremony to dismantle the last competition robot.  Played with tuba, two trombones and perhaps a ukulele it should be interesting.  Oh, and one of them breezed through a grant application that usually takes me several attempts and a few cuss words.

Lots more going to happen in the next month.