DAY 12

I neglected to mention but we started work on our GANNT Chart and PERT chart. Previously, we completed our RGB LED/sensor and our 2 IR sensors. Now we begin our work of design and planning on the works of our competition robot. The name of the game is color can grabber competition. The robot will autonomously, using sensors, locate the correct color can and place it in its corresponding color area.

We know of 2 possible design-grab a can or contain a can. Majority of the design uses a arm to grab the can. We decided that containment is th best. Less moving parts and that leaves us more motors to play with. The can is light so grabbing it increase the potential of knocking it over, i.e. in order to grab the can, the robot would have to be well align with the can for grabbing, if off by any degrees, the potentialities of knocking or rolling the cans over would increase as well.

Our design is based on the docking port or rather a moving docking port. We figure that if the robot can dock and secure the can, then reading the color would be considerably easier. The U shape docking came to mind. Just driving the robot up slowly to it would cause the can to place near point of reading. We added the ferris wheel arm to securely contain the can or reject the can if the sensor finds it to be the incorrect color. An added feature of the ferris wheel is the RGB col0r sensor. We had the intention of securing it near the docking point, near the base of our long range sensor, that tracks or detects the direction and distance of the cans. Since we discover that the RGB combo ferris wheel can detect cans at a arms distance, we thought that might be a fine pre-scan options for the robot. The IR sensors are place at the Left and Right leading edge of the front wheels. This will better the robot detection of initial left and right lines and help the robot line itself up for 90 degrees left or right turns. We had decided to remove the front gearing for the front wheels to add structural improvements as well as redesigning our manueverability. We also added a switch near the docking area as a checker for color scan.

We found that the GANNT chart helped us organize or manage what we do as a team timeline wise. I was initially in charge of mechanics and building of the robot and Bardia was focus on working out the programming algorithms. The IR, infrared subroutines, long range sensors, and the switch work well. Each functional subroutines from movements to sensors was rechecked and recalibrated for can seeking. Getting the robot to the can has been fairly successful, no matter what, the robot eventually finds the can. Reading the correct can color and securing the can needed more work.

The PERT chart helped us see the flow of our task. We were able to hit each point of our task.

Now it's up to figuring out how consistently work the RGB sensors to read the can color and the ground color accurately.