This week, our team mostly worked on building our new structure. We drilled holes in our PVC sheet and attached the motors to it. Our robot also came in, so we worked on getting the motors attached to it as well with the PVC sheets. Our new motor board also arrived, so we have been working on integrating it. The most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of the project is still the launcher, but that will be revealed in the next few days as the new motor control board is integrated. We tested our launcher at 10% power and analyzed that it consistently reached around 1.5 feet. Assuming power and range are linear, this means that we can at least launch 15 feet. We are thinking of testing out different wheels with different frictions/compressions to see which one launches the tennis ball the best.
No changes were made to the existing design of the system from last week. There is also no change in schedule.
Over the new week we plan to refine our structure and get started on building the ball feeder/ramp as well. We also want to get the new motor board working and begin integrating it with everything else, like the CV and robot motors.
Here is our structure so far:
