Day 10: Shooter & Programming

Shooter

The shooter retained most of its current form in terms of design, some new pieces were just added on. A system for indexing and stacking frisbees was designed and implemented on the prototype shooter, so that it will be able to load several frisbees.

Programming

The programming team had an effiecient day today. Firstly, they worked on the autonomous script and selector.  The programmers hope to cycle between hard-coded and on-the-fly autonomous sequences with a press of a button.  Secondly, they worked on the Smart Dashboard and the GUI.  The team managed to get the FTP connection to work.  It turns out that the Apache Commons jar should be placed in the lib/ directory of the Smart Dashboard folder.  This has yet to be tested on the driver station laptop, which will be done tomorrow.  Finally, they started designing the control board and creating the corresponding list of parts.  The team decided on driver and operator controls, such as joysticks, buttons, and switches for the robot's functions.  Students also decided on the sensors that would go in the robot (encoders, gyro, etc).

Design

The design of the robot has been coming along slowly but steadily.  The team decided on a 6 motor drivetrain utilizing 6 CIM motors.  Furthermore, each drive gearbox has a Power Take-Off (PTO) which could be used later to power a hanging mechanism.

After intake prototypes illuminated potential difficulties bringing disks up such a steep angle, it was brought up that a wider robot would allow for a gap in the bumpers for frisbees to travel through. After a long discussion, this route was pursued and the drivebase weldment (assembly 254-13-A-0300) was finalized and the base plate was sent out for manufacturing by sponsor BAE Systems.

With the drivebase weldment finalized, students worked to make CAD drawings for the components of the weldment.  Furthemore, the control board design began.

Miscellaneous

The shipment from Coast Aluminum arrived. It was taken apart, checked and stored with the other aluminum. Some of it was cut to begin manufacturing a few of the smaller parts.

Action Items

• Finish bumper design

• Hold a design review for the helical conveyor/indexer

• Begin prototyping the helical conveyor/indexer

• Begin cutting drivebase stock 

• Continue work on autonomous selector

• Test uploading files from Smart Dashboard on driver station laptop