Date : Friday, 28 October
Time: 1.30 - .30 p.m.
Subject: Preparing for construction & Group Meeting
Aaron is now starting to deal with the Tetrix parts that will be fundamental material for the FTC robot. He is currently dismantling the base frame - the basic model robot that comes already assembled in the package, and organising the various Tetrix parts into their respective holes in the thin tray that is placed on the inward edges of the Tetrix box. He is highly skilled at using the Allen key to unscrew the robot plate by plate(or should that be Aaron key?)
As I watch him dismantle, I notice that there are two types of big wheels: the wheel with the big black outer ‘tyre’ and the wheel with rollers along it circumference. This bears some similarity to the Vex big wheel and Omni wheel respectively. Yet, Aaron claims that it is suggested that Vex and Tetrix be not combined together in construction. That is certainly suggestive of a few things…
In less than 25 minutes, Aaron has dismantled the whole base model. With the roles of each team member officially established, we are ready to begin plans pertaining to the design of the robot.
Aaron is studying the past mechanisms used in last year’s competition and perhaps this year’s to get the batons out of the baton compartment. After observing the previous FTC on YouTube and other mediums, he has found 3 mechanisms used and has evaluated the effectiveness of each, which can be found on the next page.
During the group meeting, we confirmed our respective duties. Because there were 6 roles, but 5 of us
as a team, some of our roles overlapped. For instance, Pranavi is the publicity manager and also the design manager. Matters get a bit complicated this way. Aaron even wants to be a programmer too, besides his role as robot builder.
Even after robotics session, we continue to communicate with each other via social platforms like FaceBook. We share documents related to the competition in a DropBox folder, like this very journal, some of the pictures we took during training, etc.
The 3 Mechanisms on YouTube
1. How the robots were like from the last time we went to the science centre (Singapore)
Pros: + Consistent retrieving of batons
Cons: - Slow
- Conventional design
- Simple
2. (From YouTube)
Pros: + Quick and efficient retrieving of batons
Cons: - No firm control of retrieving
- A lot of resources would be wasted on the retriever
3.(From YouTube)
Pros: + Even quicker and efficient retrieving
- Better control with 2 motors
Below are the URLs to some YouTube videos that he saw:
No comments:
Post a Comment