Week 6 Update

Good evening everyone!

It is the final week 6 of the robotics season! We have been working hard over the past week to finish our robot. With the next few days to finish the robot, our team has entered the final stages of building where the work seems to never stop.

We have completed the exterior frame of the ramp and are working toward the completion of the ramps as a whole. We are currently working on putting pneumatics in the ramp to make the ramp fully operational. I asked Sam Moses how progress was going on the ramp and he provided some detail on the happenings of the ramp. They are attaching bars onto it to hold both sides of the ramp. This also helps provide stability for the ramps. In addition, the pneumatics will be attached soon. Overall, they are working to touch up the ramp and prepare the robot for competition. Then, they will mount it onto the robot. As mentioned earlier, many people are showing up to robotics as we work toward getting the robot completed for Tuesday.

Currently, the programming team is working to help make the robot function. Without code, the work of the mechanical and the electrical teams is useless, further demonstrating the importance of every department 0n the team. With the first elevator constructed, people like Jerry Du are working to bring the robot to life. When I asked Jerry about what he was working on, he explained how he was working on developing a function that will assist those operating the robot during competitions. He is currently working on setting values for the height of the elevator so the driver knows, by looking at the computer, just how high the elevator is. In addition, this will assist the driver in seeing where to put the blocks that must be transported around the field.  Overall, when it comes to programming, it is almost complete. Seeing as there are very few days remaining, many, if not all, of the parts of the robot are completed. We have completed our first robot and are now working on the second robot. Our team has a system whereby we create a competition and a test robot. The competition robot is the one we don’t touch after the build season is over. The second robot is basically identical to the first robot in to ensure we can keep having programming tweak and test the robot, even after we have bagged the first robot we can still make minor adjustments to the second robot and then implement those changes at competitions. This also helps our drive team practice in the team between the end of the build season and our first competition, which is in two weeks at WPI.

When I asked Sean Burns, the electrical lead, about their progress, he had a similar response. Electrical’s roles are almost completed because of the rapid approach of the end of the build season. He confirmed the fact that the first robot was completed by the end of Week 6 and that the second robot is under construction as of right now. The notable thing this week was the completion of the robot and the commencement of construction of the second. Aside from that, there isn’t much else to say other than that the team is making minor adjustments to the first robot and working on the second robot.