Week 4 Update:
Been way too long since we’ve done a proper update, but through the past weeks we’ve been working hard
Build Team
Build team has made a nearly complete design for our claw mechanism. Some minor tweaks may come as we change the material used for certain parts, but our testing has shown good results so far.
Additionally, construction has begun for the arm and drive bases. We hope to use swerve this year, but late gear shipments may stop us from using swerve. As such, two drive bases are being built. One uses swerve, with 3-d printed gears holding place until the proper gears arrive. We hope to begin testing on it late this week. The second drive base is a tank drive, a design that we know we can use and is acting as a back up if swerve falls through. The arm has been made so it can be switched to and from each drive base depending on what the final choice is.
CAD Team
We now have a fully CADed robot! Minor design changes still may come, but we have locked in on the major aspects of our robot’s design. We have decided on using a arm on a level and a gravity-aligning claw.
Programming Team
This is gonna be a doozy.
Programming has three major projects - an automatic balance command, trajectory and path planning, and preparing code for this year’s robot. We have made a command on our robot from last year to automatically balance the robot on the charge station, and it works extremely well considering the lack of precise tuning. We plan on making a more precise and efficient version for this year’s robot.
Path planning has also gone well. We have been able to make paths for our robot to follow in autonomous on our past robot, as practice for path planning on swerve. We’ve already been able to make routines more complex than possible last season.
Additionally, we’ve been making the code for swerve so we can hit the ground running when it is assembled. Just today we implemented code that should allow path planning. Basic code for the claw, which we have been able to test with success, and the arm and wrist mechanism has also been written. We hope to test this code as soon as possible.
That is all we have for now. We cannot wait for competition day to come and see all other designs! Best of luck to all teams.
). That being said, our dedicated CAD & design team has been very active since December. We’ve participated in two CADathons: F4 and the 2485 hosted CADathon. Both went well and gave us much needed design experience. We plan on releasing public CAD updates throughout the season.
