Progress

Today, the team worked to optimize the kicker and arm. The surgical tubing on the kicker was replaced with trampoline springs, to make it more easy to get a repeatable and known force. A gas spring was installed on the first stage of the arm to aid in arm deployment. Finally, limit switches were added in the pole grabber and on the arm to completely automate the lifting.

Now, thanks to help from the software team, once the arm deployed switch is flipped, the arm will deploy automatically. While the switch is still up, the robot will lift immediately once it is locked onto the bar and will stop when it has reached its final lifted position. This automation is an improvement in speed over what human drivers were able to obtain, due to prior uncertainty about whether or not the robot was locked on the pole.