Day 19 & 20: CAD, Arm Linkages, & Frame Building

For the most part we have been focusing on getting our CAD models complete over the past couple days.

We're still working on our end effector but the majority of the robot is complete in CAD.

One of the promising features of our robot is the ability to tip the totes that we are carrying back towards us. The idea behind this is that we want to shift our center of gravity back towards are robot while also lifting the front end of the totes higher. This is similar to how you would carry a heavy box by leaning back and lifting the front end of the box up. This should also make placement easier as we are able to tip the totes down on to stacks instead of just dropping them vertically.

Our printer is hard at work making some of the parts that will be included in our tilt mechanism.

Here's the current state of the prototype robot. It has it's structure up and will be getting arms mounted tomorrow. Hopefully we are lifting totes again early next week.

We are sending our first round of parts off to our sponsors, Solarcraft Inc., on Monday. So we have a lot of CAD to finish between now and then.

- Spectrum

“Every number is infinitely more than zero. The lesson being, no matter how little you may accomplish in order to feel good, at least you have done something. By doing something, you avoided doing nothing. All that can happen from there is improvement.” - Jesslyn