This week the Addtronics team tackled prototype inspection day (PID). As mentioned previously, we first gave a short introduction about our team and project and then showed a video of the quadruped walking up to the transformer box and positioning itself. We showed a video rather than doing a live demonstration due to not having yet received back our quadrupeds leg. Thus, the video would serve to show the initial portion of our demo. Next, we transitioned to the live demo which involved the quadruped laying down on the floor positioned in front of the transformer pad lid and lifting the fully weighted lid. The arm (now controlled by the GUI on the smartphone) was operated by us during the demo where the lid was lifted in small increments until reaching a fully open position.

Moving on, we plan to revise some mechanical designs to make them more aesthetically pleasing now that we have ensured their functionality. This includes having a finalized interface, adapter, and end effector piece. We plan to do something similar with the wiring where we will organize and mount the electronics more neatly now that we have ensured reliability. Additionally, we plan reduce the number of commands that need to be sent to the arm to open the lid and plan to make it a fluid motion. We will implement this by adding several sensors to indicate parameters such as position and acceleration to gain an idea of the current environment.

We are excited to share our live demo below!