This week I worked on making minor software improvements for the BallBot. We realized that if there is no ball immediately in the BallBot’s sight, we want to make the BallBot pan tennis court and look for tennis balls. In order to do this, we added a feature to the BallBot so that if there is no tennis ball in sight, the robot will spin in place and try to locate a ball. If it sees one, it will start going in the direction of the ball. If the BallBot does not see a ball, then it will rotate once in a full circle and then stop moving.
Additionally, this week I helped build a basket. Because the shape of the basket was highly specialized to the BallBot, we built it using polypropylene. This basket can fit 30 tennis balls and meets the user requirements.
Since this upcoming week is Thanksgiving and our team will be going out of town for the rest of the semester, I plan to work with my team in trying to test the BallBot on the outdoor tennis courts and figure out what other software improvements need to be made. Here is a picture of the basket that I helped make this week.
