The schedule has been tighter than expected for me, so the robotic arm development has been tough. However, I have already 3D printed the 1st and 3rd links of the Robotic Arm. It has some small size defects, so I have adjusted the CAD model and will attempt to reprint them this Sunday. Also, I have submitted the 3D printing of link 2 to FBS so that a larger printer can be used to 3D print the part. I am hoping that the parts I have ordered will come in soon before spring break starts so that I could bring the robot parts on the plane back with me and assemble them at home. Fabrication of the robotic arm should not take more than a total of 24 hours if no issues occur.
I have also started working on the design report, and hope to have it finished by the deadline. I have planned a way for us to separate the work for the report. We will each write parts of the report that we have made slides for in the presentation, plus some additional topics that need to go in the report, such as design studies. We will include all the diagrams and a couple of additional tables and pictures in our design report as well as touch upon the fabrication and assembly process of our robotic system. We will also discuss more on integration in our report, which we have all started planning.
As suggested during our design presentation, I have also looked more into how to use the available ROS libraries to implement inverse kinematics for a 4DOF complex robot such as the one I will be making. I am reviewing the math for inverse kinematics, and have looked into ROS tutorials for IKFast Kinematic Solver. My plan is to fully delve into developing the inverse kinematics software during spring break, where hopefully I will have most if not all of the robot arm assembled.