Fixing Autonomous

Despite Sonic's great performance at Western, the qualifier showed us just how broken our Autonomous mode really was. Out of all our matches, we only scored autonomous rings a few times, and, even though we were the only autonomous score the judges had seen all season, I know we can do better. I'm going to have to work with the encoders to try and get Sonic to score more consistently.

Above the rules

Well we're back from winter break, and for most of the class robot season is over; not for us though. So while everyone else disassembles and organizes and sorts, it's business as usual for Sonic Team! Casey and Pierce are practicing with the robot, Travis is building things, I'm writing this post, and none of us are doing inventory. It's great to be king!

Goals of week 20

Our robot team is going to a competition during this weekend. So now begins the final touch ups this week and hardcore practicing!!!

Shields Up!

In light of our recent acquisition of sponsors – as well as the need to display our team number – we plan to construct a frame for our robot, where we'll mount two big sheets of plexiglass. This serves two ever-useful functions: first, it gives us a place to put our sponsor(s) logo(s); second, it gives us a shield to prevent other robots from damaging our robot's insides; third, now we can put Sonic on Sonic. As a side effect, we also now have a place to put the brain and battery where there easily accessible; I took the liberty of drawing that up in SolidWorks too. 

Autonomous Ring

In the interest of speed and efficiency, we decided to create a separate holder for the autonomous ring.  This holder allows three things to be accomplished: simpler coding, placement of the ring, and ideal positioning.  The slight advantage this gives may not seem like much, but it adds up.

Improving the End Effector

The old end effector design, while good, was not as efficient as we wanted – it worked beautifully, but being the perfectionists that we are, we wanted to do even better.  We decided to slightly alter the shape of the end effector, which should allow it to secure the rings even better. It is still a prototype, but the results so far have been promising.

Casey's New Toy

Today, we finally got the shipment of IR Sensors that we'd been waiting for, and the team is rightfully excited. Unfortunately, the only thing standing in the way of Casey and his new toy was the mandatory prototyping we do before sticking it on. So in lieu of being hounded to death by the general populace, I quickly drew us a simple mount for the sensor. It's not pretty,  but it gets Casey off my case and onto the computer, so I call that a win!