Blog
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Field: The field is essentially done and stable - the carpet is attached firmly to the bump, and despite limited abuse nothing has shown any signs of breaking.Closet: A small band took the initiative to clean the closet in the afternoon, and it looks great. Everything was filtered and put in its appropriate place, and for the first time in at least 3.5 years the materials corner looks and is organized! Let\'s try to keep it looking like this - if you forget the cleanup crew\'s note above the door should remind you.
Kitbot: Its gearbox problem was resolved, and it soon made it over the bump. The journey was not elegant, but it made it upright and in one piece.
Programming: The programmers have gotten the robot to move using both LabView and Java, and their next goal is to get the vision system to work.
Design: We discussed methods of hanging our robot from the tower and looked at techniques used by teams in previous years. We are leaning towards using a strong wire on a winch, which would be the most weight-effective method, but still have to refine our way of getting it attached to the bar and enabling other robots to hang from us. We tested the viability of using a roller to trap the ball with our robot and found it to be extremely effective - it grips almost too strongly. We discussed the usefulness of a side kicker and decided we should work on a prototype first.
Prototyping: The prototype of a hybrid surgical tubing/pneumatic cylinder kicker without a latching mechanism worked somewhat better than the pure pneumatic cylinder version, but is still nowhere near as good as the free-release only tubing kicker. A \"pinball\"-like punching prototype was started.
Solidworks: The CAD...ers have a rough design of the frame, most of the electronics parts, and are working on building a virtual model of the field.
-Ryan Quincy
On January 25, 2010
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