This week I accomplished a lot with this project. I replaced the temporary putty that was attaching the wheels to the DC motor with epoxy putty, which is now there permanently and there is no wobble at all during the spinning. I finalized the entire ramp and the ball rolls smoothly into the wheels and consistently follows the same track throughout all rolling tests. I helped Miles program the robot motors and spin its wheels, allowing it to go forward, reverse, right, and left. I bought four 12V 20Ah car batteries and a charger for those to directly connect it to our 2 DC motors, which take in 24V and 18A each. This is the backup option due to the newest motor control board breaking. I am connecting two 12V batteries in series for each motor to achieve 24V and put the DC motors at maximum power. Finally, I am currently building a funnel and double ramp system that holds 11 tennis balls and programming a servo with Miles to only let 1 ball drop/shoot at a time. To elaborate on the double ramp system: the ball slowly rolls down a shallow ramp at first into the servo and then quickly rolls down the steeper ramp into the motors, helping to achieve the 1 ball drop at a time.
My progress earlier this week was super behind due to our new motor control board breaking again, but I, along with my group, have made significant progress the past few days with CV tests, structure design, robot motor controls, launch tests, and overall integration.
Since final demo is coming up, I hope to finish the last touches of the structure, integrate the servo with the CV, and finally do extensive launch tests with the new batteries.