pic: Team 548's Arm Controls

[Lindsey]

Originally Posted by dubious elise

I saw those in action at BMR, they seemed to be really quite effective and efficient. Did he design and fabricate the entire assembly himself or was there some sort of plan that he worked off of (eg: playstation gloves)?

Matt did make the whole set up himself. We went through several ideas, originally we had wanted flex sensors that would allow you to bend your fingers and extend the robot's arm, but they were too unreliable and prone to breaking (I think that idea may have come form the play-station gloves). We ended up using a slider mounted on the glove for the telescoping part of the robot arm and an encoder for the rotating part. As you bend your arm (at the elbow) the arm lifts up, straight driver arm = robot arm down, and completely bet driver arm = robot arm all the way up. The prototype was made from a multi-jointed desk-lamp, and later simplified and steam lined.

Before the wearable controls were finished we had to test the arm with a joystick, it was a pain and the wearable controls make working the arm easy.

We will be at championship in the Archimedes division, feel free to come check us out. Matt can give you a more thorough explanation, I only know the basics.

Lindsey