Again With the Robot

Well this week turned out to be fruitful. I had two midterms and we made lots of progress on the robot. As you can see from the picture it is taking on the form that we have envisioned. Building the thing was very challenging and time consuming. No matter how good your solid model is, you will still end up making changes. The chief change we had to make was that the motor gearboxes we bought were larger than the ones I used as a pattern to make the model. As a result, the robot turned out about 1 inch wider than the model. I don't think it will hamper the models performance, but we have yet to find out for sure.

The right picture demonstrates how the robot will climb the step. The shoebox is 6 inches high which is what will be required for the competition, and as you can see, it is plenty capable of the task.

Now that we are to this point in the project, I feel much better. Not enough had been happening up to this point and my teammates and I were very frustrated. Now, we are faced with a new set of challenges. Today I finished making the H-bridge control cables which will be used to control the motors, and I was going to start playing with the handy board but I seem to have gotten a bad one. I was going to try to work out a sequence for climbing a single step and several steps in succession, but that will have to wait. It's probably for the better since I have a midterm on Monday.