Hungry Robot!

Success!! Our hand – or otherwise known as “dinosaur mouth”, is fully functional and has proven itself to be the superior hand design as of right now. We were able to program its servo to pick up rocks and drop them. Our “dino mouth” managed to engulf a golf ball, as well many other rocks that are similar to those we will encounter in the real competition. We also fed it candy, as a reward for being so cute. Now, the only thing that is left for us to do with this hand is attach it to the arm, which isn’t without its own difficulties.

Attaching the hand to the arm will be relatively easy but the main problem will be rebuilding the arm itself as the arm has provided the team with a myriad of problems, which include: the length, the weight, and the strength of all of its components. Because C.L.O.E.E.’s arm has to be long, it has consequently become too heavy. The two new servos at the base of the arm have trouble lifting the arm up. This fact has caused the team to not only shorten the arm to make it lighter, but also order new servos for the arm and redesign it as well.

Alyssa has found her “thing”, as she spent five hours straight in the physics room learning about how math can solve torque and force problems with our servos.
F = K delta X. After harassing Mr. Philbin and picking his brain, she discovered that horses have a “spring in their neck that helps the servo not have to use as much torque.” In other words, biology is a helpful resource.

We also took the rover outside and had Eric Perry from Colorado Mesa University control C.L.O.E.E remotely again. After attempting to run the rover with three of its cameras, we learned that we still have a latency issue along with the cameras fighting each other for bandwidth. We will need to compress the data stream as much as possible to avoid lag in our videos. It is very important that we have as much time as possible to react to our environment.