Today was the starting day of the competition where all the teams unpacked, fixed minor (and major) problems, did 3 practice rounds, and met the other teams. We did not make it to our first practice round, and during the second round our arm unfortunately broke into a few pieces, and was not fix-able. After the second practice round we had our safety inspection, and we were a few pounds over weight so we just took the entire arm and all of the arm hardware off completely. During our third match the flag pole fell down and we ended up accidentally using it as a skewer against other robots. Now we are back at Franklin fixing a few things and making out robot legal.
Tag Archive for 'bugs'
The robot MUST be gone by the 19th of February. That’s tomorrow. At exactly midnight, the robot has to leave. So, we are all panicked since the robot is not ready to leave. We have spent all day fixing little (and big) problems, preparing paperwork, checking for compliance with all rules, and generally panicking about everything. Testing has been delayed, but at this point we are thinking that the robot will still work okay at the competition, although perhaps not as well as we had hoped for.
Today we went to the church to practice driving more, and to pick drivers. After a few interesting errors we were able to get the robot functional. As we were narrowing down the drivers, there were a few unfortunate mishaps.
While driving, the robot hit the wall pretty hard quite a few times, most of the time it hit the bumpers, but the last time while Danyelle was driving there was no bumper on the front. The robot instantly turned off and the main power cord was shaken loose. Now it seems that our frame and a few of the bolts on the wheels are severely bent, and although the frame is mostly fixed by now, it will never be the same.
We have learned a valuable lesson, ALWAYS have ALL the bumpers on while driving the robot.
As the shipment date gets closer, we hurry to finish our robot. The arm is nearing completion, and the pneumatic actuator is going well. We are starting to run out of room on the board itself, and therefore searching for safe mounting room elsewhere.
On Tuesday we tested driving the robot around chairs, and found many known and unknown errors. Most of the people on the team got to test drive the robot, and only a few small parts fell off at random. We have also mostly figured out the status light! yay!
Today we tested the robot on the ground for the first time. Most of the time all of the wheels move, and we can go most of the directions that we originally wanted to. We’re still fixing little problems, and working on the code. After we fix all of the bugs, we will start working on the arm.
There was an instance where the robot attacked the trashcan, when the Operator Control died resulting in the robot doing unknown, uncontrolled things involving many flashing lights. Fortunately, the trash can is still intact, and the robot was stopped with only some minor damage to a cable that got caught in the wheels. We now have an easy-to-hit-at-high-speed reset button on the top of the robot, which will facilitate dealing with future emergencies.
