Blog Post 3

Over the work period of February 9- March 7, give a description of the work conducted by your team and the progress made on your project.

During this work period (February 9 - March 7), the team has been mainly focused on the constructing of the rover. The main work areas have been around building the main structure of the rover. Another main area of work has been installing electrical components for powering the rover. The last part of this work period has been focused on tuning the PID loops as well as testing the rover to verify that it is structurally sound by starting to operate it and see how it functions while in motion.

For the same work period, discuss any challenges or obstacles (technical or non-technical) that your team has faced. Follow up by explaining the solution implemented or your plan to address the challenge.

One major challenge we have been facing is the ESCs currently on the rover can only rotate the motors in one direction. The current workaround is positioning the ESCs on the two front motors to move the rover forward while the ESCs on the two rear motors will be oriented to drive the rover in reverse. Another option is to use reversible ESCs which would allow all the motors to move in all directions. Also, as the rover has started becoming operational, small problems in the overall design have come up such as needing to make the gears have a better mesh. The rover is the transition of becoming more robust as it will have to traverse intense terrain. These small problems have had quick fixes that can be solved through a small redesign and reprinting the part. These minor problems have pushed back our timeline by a few days but will hopefully be able to get back on track after these small problems are fixed and the rover becomes more robust because of it.

Describe your team's plan for the work period from March 8th to the submission of your design review presentations. Explain any anticipated challenges.

The plan for the work period between March 8th and the submission of the design review presentation is to get the rover to undergo the validation tests as much as possible and acquire as much data as we can. We are still constructing the rover to be more robust (as stated above), but the team’s main overall plan is to start testing it and making more modifications after the preliminary testing results come in. We are excited to begin testing and are hoping to finish the constructing of the rover by mid-week of spring break (March 13).

Give 2-3 figures that are representative of the current status of your project. Explain these figures and their importance to your work

Figure 1: Rover (Top View) Camera Base

Figure 2: Rover (Side View) Wheel Placement

Figure 3: Motor Housing and Gears

These images show the camera base, wheel design and placement, and motor housing with gears. The camera base is required in order to receive useful feedback from the rover as there is no other place to mount the camera. The wheel design went through multiple iterations but ultimately team 25 has decided to use 8 wheels coated in rubber because the rover could not gain any traction on multiple surfaces with previous designs. This is crucial because without any traction the rover would not be able to pass any validation testing or work effectively. The motor housing needed to be perfectly sized for the motors used to control each set of two wheels to avoid any packing issues.