Build Season 2013 – Week 3 Recap

This week was one of the busiest as we were back to school after exam week and had to work at twice the rate to make up for the time we lost. Luckily we were able to make some excellent progress with our design throughout the week. 

On Monday, January 21st, there was no school. This however, did not stop the Adambots from working towards our first competition of the season, being held in four weeks. Throughout the day, multiple sub-groups met , including all build, marketing, and animation teams. It was a very productive start to the week. The rest of the days the build teams worked after school to continue building the robot. While by the end of the week only some of the basic components had been build, we made some good progress and we look on track to complete our goals.

Each team met at some point during the week, with the build teams there almost daily, working diligently to complete their tasks.

The Chassis Team built the basic chassis for the robot, after finally picking the right dimensions. With the chassis built the rest of the parts can now be fit into place as the robot progresses.

The CAD Team has been finalizing drawings for the various subsystems of the robot. Currently, the robot’s chassis is done and most of the shooter and disc manipulation systems are also designed and drawn. The plan currently has the robotics CAD assembly finished at the end of this week.

The Programming Team has continued to plan out in greater detail the robot’s code structure. The team has made charts and diagrams to help organize the interactions between each subsystem to avoid confusion or disorder in the result. In addition, through the use of a camera, the robot can identify the targets and estimate their locations. Image capture takes about 1 second per frame with the current algorithm.

The Disc Shooter Team has mostly been testing the prototype at various angles and speeds to record data on its capability. After finalizing the design and building, they worked all day Saturday and Monday testing and finding that the wheel they were using was too slick. But, after experimentation, they found a wheel that suits very well. They have recorded that, with this wheel, the shooter is able to shoot discs as far as 80 feet and as high as 10 feet at only 50-60 percent of the motor’s maximum power.

The Controls Team have been working on documenting the inputs and outputs needed for the season. These have changed as our design has progressed. Soon they will begin working on the control board.

The Field Team finished the pyramid and built the goals to hang up on the wall and test the shooter with. Testing was carried out on Saturday, with some success.

This week the Marketing Team continued preparing for the Palmetto Regional. They discussed everything accomplished by ordering the new buttons and the new ducks. The next task that the marketing team is working on is creating the thank you video for the sponsors. This is one main priority to get done before going to the Palmetto Regionals. Also, the team discussed what needs to be done to put up the pit, which will physically be practiced I the coming week.

As far as other non-engineering teams go, there was also another meeting with the LamBots over voice chat on Saturday the 26th. Also, the Digital Media Team has been working on putting together the podcast, although due to technical issues the first edition will not be available until later this week. Also digital media has been working on updating the website to make sure that everything is current.

We are reaching the half-way point between the start of the build season and the first competition, and so the pressure is now on for us to get our robot ready and working for the first competition at Myrtle Beach.

Stay tuned for more AdamBots updates and our podcast, coming soon!