Hi everyone!
Sorry for not updating earlier. These things are time-consuming to write, and I'm quite busy, both within the team and in other matters as well.
So, here's what's happened since I last posted:
>We've made some progress on the forklift. It is now capable of raising and lowering quite nicely; I'd say that it has about 100 pounds of force to it, which is more than enough. The Clips of Destiny
still aren't done: we made some and attached them, but they were too stiff to pick up a bin from above. Other than that, though, the forklift is complete and lookin' good, man!
>The final electrical board is 100% done, mounted vertically, and it works. Or at least I assume that it works: While I can't tell a PWM cable from a Talon, I know that there are loads of happy blinky lights when things are turned on, and that the robot moves and raises and lowers the forklift when we tell it to.
>The electrical team has also been busy mounting sensors to the robot. As of now, it has a camera, a little gyroscope/accelerometer thing, and some magnetic sensors that tell us how high the forklift is. They're looking to add even more sensors, but we're trying to restrain them by force. (To give you a sense of how unique all of this is, last year's robot had a single camera, and even
that didn't work too well.)
>We built a little ramp for the robot to drive over, and it drove over the thing quite nicely. So we should be able to drive to the top of the Scoring Platform with no difficulty. Those 6" wheels give the robot plenty of clearance.
That's pretty much it, for now! I wish that we had more to report.
I'll probably edit this post with a picture or a build video... so check back soon
-Thromgord