This week the Addtronics team has been hard at work , but who says work can’t be fun? Despite all our progress, the team still got the chance to with enjoy a nice Florida fall day together (see above picture)! This week we are extremely excited to share with you even more progress with testing and prototyping:
Continuing from last week, we have updated the mock box to be more representative of a real transformer pad by adding an accurately dimensioned base and have replaced the lid with a more lightweight and modular design (pictured left). The modularity of the lid will allow us to progressively increase the weight of the lid as we test the lifting capacity of our integrated system (coming soon).
Additionally, we have begun prototyping our physical interface to integrate the robotic arm to the quadruped. We plan to use the picatinny rails shown to the right for mounting of the arm base. More rails will be printed to begin base construction soon!
Aside from prototyping for integration and testing, this week we have all shifted our focus to the robotic arm (see some of our team working on the arm in the picture to the left). Currently, we plan to reduce the arm from 6 degrees of freedom to 4 degrees of freedom. This reduction will help reduce the total weight and space that will be taken up by the electrical components housed on the quadruped. This reduction will also help improve rigidity and strength of the arm during the lifting process.
In continuation with the arm, we plan to further reduce electrical components by controlling the arm via a Raspberry Pi. Aside from reducing components, this will greatly simplify the code and decrease lag time to better control overall. We have begun some preliminary testing of controlling the arm and lifting the mock box lid using the Raspberry Pi which can be seen in the video below.
Aside from physical testing and design advances, we are currently working on developing our demo for prototype inspection day. We plan to incorporate a lot of the tested features and give an accurate display of the capabilities of our design. We have created a schedule with tasks to ensure we meet all our expectations for our prototype which we look forward to sharing with you all!