This week I worked on assembling the robot and motor control. Caroline and I worked on laser cutting all the pieces of the robot chassis which took a few iterations. The first iteration of the top piece was cut on 6mm wood which proved to be too thick for achieving the bending effect we were going for. We recut the top piece on 3mm wood and adjusted the other pieces accordingly. We also realized our ball caster is too big, causing our robot to tilt backward, so we’ll have to get a new one of the appropriate size. I worked on interfacing the L298N with the DC motors and controlling them through the Arduino. I initially struggled with getting the encoders to read correctly using hardware interrupts but eventually figured out the timing and update rules. I also implemented PID control for position control for one motor and will work on extending this to the robot position next week. We still need to test the current code with the motors mounted on the robot to ensure that we can achieve straight-line motion, which I plan to do next week. Additionally, I worked on preparing for the design review presentation and planned out connections and interfaces for the design report.
Next week I will continue to work on motor control and odometry and plan to get the logic working for random exploration on the field. My progress is currently on track with the schedule. I will also be working on the design report over the next few days.
The updated test code and CAD files can be found on the github repository: https://github.com/aditti-ramsisaria/ece-capstone