Today we had a day off from school which allowed us to have a large amount of time to meet and work on the robot, since the competition is getting closer and closer. Rachel began working on programing the robot controllers (RACHEL ADD SOMETHING HERE) and while that had a few difficulties it began working better and better before the day was over. We also worked on each of our bios in the engineering notebook, as well as writing a little bit about our team. We also decided on the three people on the team that are the best at driving the robot (Ava, Adelaide, and Izzie) and worked on "challenges" for them to improve their driving skills. Again today, the robot did not work for a small amount of time, but began working again 30 minutes later. This is becoming a recurring problem and is a concern for us. Isabella and Adelaide worked on mounting a metal piece on the front of the robot to act as a pusher, preventing the debris on the field from getting under the robot, and allowing us to be able to push it out of the way. We ended the meeting by taking a look at the robotic board for FLL, which will allow us to participate in outreach as more informed mentors.
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Today all of the parts that we had ordered online came in the mail. We replaced the encoder on one part of the robot wheels, and then we tested the robot, to discover that that was not the only issue, that we were also having problems with one of the low-hanging wires on the robot. Once that was replaced we were able to use the controllers to control both wheels of the robot. We all practiced driving a little bit, like picking things up, and discovering which way to go up the moutian. We were able to figure out that with the driving wheels in the back of the robot we were able to get up into the low zone with our robot. One issue with this was that when we used too much power, the robot flipped over backwards, which caused a few close calls when we almost didn't catch it before it hit the ground. Another issue that we had was the sometimes the blocks and balls that will be on the floor of the robot field slipped under our robot and became tangled in the wheels and wires. This caused the robot to stop moving, so a solution will need to be made for that.
Today we met from about 6 to 8 to finish building the mountain and to do online shipping orders. First we decided to figure out what all we needed to order, and decided on 2 robot encoders (one as a replacement, one as an extra to have), 2 extra servo motors that rotate 360 degrees to use for attachments, extras of the screws that we are running out of, and another usb OTG adapter.
After finishing that, we completed the upper part of the mountain assembly, with only a few difficulties with the fit of bars in slots, and a large amount of problems with fidning the correct screws. Eventually we realized that we had used the wrong screws for specific locations, and that caused us to have to remove the screws and redo parts of our project. After finishing this we had moved on to assembling the individual parts of the mountain, which went pretty smoothly, however it took forever due to the fact that one person had to hold the bliot, and one person had to hold the nut, but eventually it worked out okay, just taking a large amount of time. We finished up by putting the feet on the back of the mountain, and then our meeting was finished. Today, all 5 of us met for a long 3 hour meeting. We all divided up in smaller groups to troubleshoot any problems with the robot, design the t-shirts and edit the website, and continue to build the mission assemblies.
At the beginning of the day, Isabella and Adelaide started off the day by building the upper mountain assembly. We had many technical difficulties, due to the fact that the instructions were often unclear and difficult to understand. Some problems we had were getting the middle of the assembly to slide down the upper, due to the fact that the hole was slightly small. While we were doing this, we unknowingly bent the main center beam, which we did not discover until later, when we were trying to apply black plastic brackets to the center, and had many technical difficulties. With a large amount of bending back, and teamwork with the help of Ava, the center beam was bent back and we had some screw troubles, due to the fact that all three holes did not line up properly. One of the main problems with the robot was that only one of the motors spun, and responded to the controller. We decided that this means that the issue could be one of the three things, motor, encoder, or wiring. While the others were working on the mountain assembly, Izzie, Rachel, and Ava were working on checking the first potential cause of the problem, the motors. We noticed that the gears were |
This blog covers details about our outreach events and other events that are important to our team, and our season.
AuthorHi, we are the Rubies, FTC team 9890. To learn more about us, visit the "About Us" page Archives
April 2016
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