This week, after we demo’d I went to work on improvements to our physical drop system. First, I wanted to explore whether we were getting peak thrust from our motors by using a higher-gauge wire from the controllers to the motors. This change yielded a gain of 70g of thrust per motor, which was not insignificant. We will be moving all of our connectors to this 16AWG wire. Additionally we ordered 7 inch propellers that fit our shaft diameter, which are a 1 inch step up from our current props. I also measured our battery voltage and realized that it needed to be charged because on some of our pre-drop tests, the motors were struggling to keep thrust. I hope with topped off batteries, larger propellers, and thicker wires we will be able to push the most thrust possible out of our motors.
We also did a drop with the added weight to try and reduce swinging. This succeeded, but the added mass was a bit much, and we didn’t swing but we also didn’t move very much laterally. I think that using a solution in-between, where we decrease the added weight slightly, and use the aforementioned thrust changes will help balance the variables so that purposeful movement is possible.
Additionally, we went to the bridge again to test our perception system, where we found that the camera lens was working against us, and the fisheye made it hard to see the circle at the bottom with our processing added on. Using a standard camera or different lens should help to alleviate this, especially because the ultra wide fisheye is overkill when dropping from such height.