After a nice and refreshing holiday break the Addtronics team is back in motion and eager to implement new ideas! Coming back from the break included the opportunity to update our organizational strategies and revise our plan based on our progress so far. We were able to modify old goals to better fit our new needs as well as develop a better meeting plan to keep all of our members up to date with day to day changes.

What’s New

The aforementioned acrylic interface has been built and used for simple testing. We determined that the acrylic was much too flexible and shattered during one of our tests. Aside from the new acrylic interface we’ve replaced the forearm of the robotic arm with a linear actuator. The linear actuator will help reduce the total weight of the robotic arm as well as allow for better control since we had previously reduced the arm’s degrees of freedom. Additionally, we have replaced the motor which provides the lifting motion of the forearm for a much stronger motor in order to achieve a bigger payload with the robotic system. We’ve begun initial testing using the new motor and linear actuator which can be seen in the video at the bottom!

Future Work

After discovering the acrylic interface was not sufficiently strong, we are now planning to create a new smaller interface that will be entirely 3D printed with a fill density and thickness strong enough to sufficiently hold and protect the components. A new 3D printed interface will also significantly reduce the load experienced by the quadruped which will facilitate its actions. Due to our change to the linear actuator, we are working on creating an adapter part to mount the end effector onto the linear actuator. This part will allow for the end effector to be modular and gives the option for interchangeable end effectors in the future. Additionally, we plan to continue developing the GUI to allow for cohesive control of both the arm and the quadruped.