We’ve been prototyping a whole slew of mechanisms over the last few days, and sometimes it felt like we weren’t making much progress, and that, “man, all we’ve been doing for the last few weeks has just been cutting wood in various shapes!”
Well… we definitely turned a corner this weekend! It’s been one of our most productive weekends so far, with actual framing for our elevator coming together, the hatch intake redesign being tested, and our drivetrain being wired up and driven in the hallway! Things are definitely coming together! Over the next few days, we’ll be rigging up the elevator, and testing out the manipulator prototypes properly.
Our programming team also got a little carried away with our mentor’s credit card, and we managed to snag a Limelight camera for use this season. OK, who are we kidding, out head coach was so excited to try it out that he set a calendar reminder the day it went on sale. Obsessive much? Anyway… we got the Limelight mounted on our drivetrain, and spent the day tweaking our “automated docking procedure”, with the goal of being able to drive close to a hatch drop off, hit a button, and have the robot automagically dock itself, just like spacecraft and the International Space Station!
We’re really excited by the progress we’ve had this weekend, and can’t wait to wire everything up and have a robot for real!
Cutting out temporary mounting frames for the Limelight
“Just gonna tighten this one thing here…”
Limelight-ing