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Lillie’s Status Report for 02/27/2021

This week I helped finalize the project proposal presentation slides. I also met with my team to put together a bill of materials. I 3D modeled custom chess pieces for the game. Each piece has the same circular platform on the bottom that will help the grabbing mechanism pick the pieces up. I’ve been researching what type of gripping mechanism we should use. I’m trying to figure out if a hinged gripping mechanism would be better than a gripper that retracts up and down so as not to knock over other pieces.

This week I will be finishing the gripper design and beginning the web client interface.

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Team Status Report for 02/20/2021

The most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of our project is not being able to establish a strong wireless connection between the gantry and web interface. In the event that we are unable to achieve this we can establish a wired connection. Another potential issue would be if the pandemic gets worse and we are unable to use TechSpark for rapid prototyping the parts we need for the gantry. To best mitigate this risk we aim to design and print most, if not all, the 3D printed parts we need for this project by 2/28/21.

Our initial project idea was to create a robotic arm controlled via computer vision. After feedback from faculty and TAs, we decided to pivot our project idea to something more suitable for our skillset. Instead of a robotic arm, we are creating a chess robot that uses computer vision to detect and facilitate piece movement. This change was necessary because the robotic arm idea was a bit too controls heavy, and most of our expertise is in software and hardware. The only cost of this change was time because we had not yet began making the robotic arm.

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Lillie’s Status Report for 02/20/2021

This week I met with my teammates and capstone advisor to get feedback on our project idea. After getting some feedback and further discussion with the team, we did some more research and flushed out the criteria we wanted our project to meet. After determining what exactly we wanted our project to do we worked on the project proposal presentation and created a Gantt chart to schedule and assign tasks. I am on schedule this week since we have just been working on specifying our plan and determining what milestones we want to accomplish and when. I plan to 3D model the basic pieces we need for the gantry this week and submit those models to be printed by the end of the week. I also plan to get a basic outline of the web interface the user will be interacting with started.