This week our team has settled back into our respective homes and had more time to explore the adjustments to our project after switching to remote.

Claire and I (Maxine) worked on Fusion360. We both started with basic tutorials to learn the fundamentals of the software. The current goal is to do our best to simulate the implementation plan we had previously. We thought about switching to a robotic arm since there are more online resources on how to build those, but we decided that the added complexity of the path planning mathematics was not worth the switch.

Claire worked on the rack-and-pinion component which we will use for our Z-axis motion. I worked on the XY gantry simulation.

Arka has been setting up the new Raspberry Pi he got from Claire (the old one he was using is in the lab). He has also been working on improving the edge detection code.

We have also updated our Gantt chart based on our project modifications. Our goal right now is to simulate the entire robotics system, and keeping the software portion pretty much the same. We are discussing whether to remove the frontend portion, since its primary functionalities are now more cosmetic than functional. Firstly, we wanted the user to be able to start the sorting process by pressing a button on the display. However, it is not possible to deeplink and “start” our Fusion360 simulation externally. Second, we wanted to display the progress and estimated time left of the sorting process. Again, our simulations won’t have associated timings so whatever “progress” we display will be hardcoded and not linked to the simulation.

Next week, Arka aims to finish up setting the new RPi, Claire and I will continue working on the simulation of the XY gantry and Z axis components.