Barking up the wrong tree

New revised interface

This week the Addtronics week has been steadily preparing for Prototype Inspection Day (PID) which will occur next week. Here we plan to demonstrate our prototype to judges who will be able to ask questions and provide us with valuable feedback on our design. Since we have not yet received back the front left leg of the quadruped after being sent to be repaired, we have planned to open the mock box lid entirely using the arm. Thus, we plan to first show how the quadruped would walk up to the transformer box by displaying a video. Then, we plan to physically demonstrate our prototype lifting the lid. The quadruped will start laying down in front of the mock transformer box (in the position it would end in the video) and we would begin control of the arm via the GUI. We will show the judges the GUI and how it is being controlled in order to obtain their feedback on how user-friendly it is. We will not be allowing the judges themselves to use the GUI as improper control could lead to hardware damage and poses a safety risk to those nearby. We plan to control the arm using the GUI to completely lift the lid thus demonstrating our scope of work.

In order to ensure our PID demo is reliable we have each been working on updating individual aspects of our prototype. Physically, we have revised the interface to be stronger and more durable. To do this the geometry was changed to bear the load of the lid better as well as adding slots for steel reinforcement bars. Additionally, another iteration of a steel reinforced adapter has been manufactured to avoid breaking when lifting the lid. Lastly, the GUI has been successfully deployed onto a smartphone where testing has confirmed that the Raspberry Pi is receiving the command signals sent from the phone to control the arm motors. Moving forward we plan to continue unity testing and increasing the amount of weight that the robot assembly can lift. We will also be adding a flashing light to indicate when the robot is turned on for visibility in poor weather conditions as well as to potentially scare off dangerous wildlife.

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