The team made great progress the past few days! Arm concept has matured, drivetrain/chassis is in fabrication, controls team has velocity-control working, and field elements are nearly complete. (just need to finish hab and make a cargo ship port)
– David Brinza, Lead Mentor
Controls
After a very long weekend, the controls team has successfully implemented velocity control! We first discussed the theory behind PID-based velocity control before prototyping our algorithm. Then, we spent most of the day on Monday implementing and tuning our new PID system, remapping the joystick’s velocity curve, enabling and tuning the system for high gear, tweaking our arcade drive control system, and encapsulating the entire system in an easy-to-configure class.
It was a very long meeting!
– Luke, Head of Controls
Business and Outreach
Over the past week, the Chairman’s Team has chosen the theme for the essay, “Thunder Valley!!!” We’ve started drafting the Chairman’s Essay and have refined our Executive Summary questions almost to perfection. Work for the Chairman’s video has also begun and we hope to refine the script and start thinking about filming in the coming weeks! Overall, progress has been steady and we will continue to work on writing the essay so we are finished well before the deadline and have plenty of time to revise and edit!
– Ethan, Head of Business and Outreach
Fabrication
Entering week two, those of us in Fabrication set our eyes on two goals: finishing some field elements and creating parts for the competition robot.
We finalized the full rocket build and added vision tape and hook and loop fastener. Soon after, the drive team stress-tested it quite rigorously with some crash tests as the driver began learning the new control system with the practice robot. Additionally, we made several of the parts for the competition robot drive train as soon as Design gave us the prints, and we assembled the frame with those pieces. We expect to be putting wheels, belts, and gearboxes on the frame before week three is over, and hopefully getting a testing arm done to put on our practice robot.
– Mateo, Head of Fabrication
Design
In week 3, the Design team finalized the arm drive mechanism and began tweaking the old end effector design to make a new one, velcro surface will be integrated into the roller mechanism using encoders and velcro surface on certain parts of the roller. At this point we have a lot of our specific design concepts pinned down.
– Robert, Design Team
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