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Sara’s Post for 2/82025

This week, I focused on designing a wheelbase and its motor. I mainly did this after feedback from the project proposal mentioned that it would take more power to go up a 60-degree slope. This week, I considered two setups: two motors per side or one or one motor connected to wheels. The two-motor setup is way more powerful, but I still need to refine it. One motor per side needs more mechanical work and has less power, so I’m leaning toward two.

Another feedback was on how the robot’s FPGA and circuits are protected from water from our testing glasses. To protect our components, I am thinking about using a flexi-glass cover. I worked with one  Since we are working with water, we might consider components that are easy to wipe off to prevent mold from growing. Or we take extra precautions to make sure we wipe down components. We are thinking about raised edges and magic for the platform to show the water does not slide. The raised edge has to be watertight to prevent the leakage on the board.

I also put in a purchase request for a motor and motor driver, which got approved. I researched brushless motors because, as I mentioned earlier, I was worried about our robot’s ability to climb a slope. I chose 775 DC Motor 12v DC Motor High Torque DC Motor Max 20000 RPM Dual Ball Bearings Quiet Power Wheels Motor Upgrade DC Motor (this is the listing name on Amazon) because it was at a great rpm and was utilized in driveable children’s toy cars, which made me confident this could reasonably drive our robot. I researched the motor driver and I was happy that it was compatible with both the FPGA and the motor I wanted to use, and its use in electric skateboards.

This week, I focused on working on the project presentation as I was presenting. Raymond and I made sure we had the right number of slides, justification for our choices, and making sure the slides looked nice and neat.

Right now, I feel good about where I’m at. I’ve got the wheelbase design down and worked through some problems that came up during the presentation. The next big task is figuring out the lifting mechanism and finalizing a robot design. On Sunday, the design proposal is due, which is huge goal.

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Team Status Report for 2/8/25

The most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project are that if the parts we ordered are not able to complete the capabilities that we expect them to do. We did research into the parts that we have ordered already to ensure that they are compatible and have the basic capabilities, but you never know how well they will work until you actually begin to test them. Another point that could jeopardize the project would be if the IMUs are not precise enough. Since the basis of our project is that we need to balance cups of water precisely so that there is no spillage, we will need the IMUs to be able to provide accurate data so that we can smoothly adjust our platform to balance the cups of water.  We will manage these risks by starting early and testing early. If we figure out that some parts that we planned on using are not good enough for our project, we will continue to do research and find the parts that can do what we need. We are confident that this robot is achievable within the budget since there are many examples of robots using IMUs to perform balancing tasks online, so it will just come to figuring out the correct implementation.

As we move from the proposal stage to the design stage. we are still designing our system, so there will be many changes throughout the next week, such as what kind of platform we will use and how we will prevent water from spilling and affecting the electronics. Generally, our requirements have remained the same, but as we continue to design our system, we will be zooming into the finer details and making changes there. The costs of the small detail changes should be within the total budget and are not expected to change the cost of the device or affect the requirements.

 

 

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Raymond’s Status Report for 2/8/25

This week I worked on the proposal with Sara. We had to flesh out our use case and requirements so that we could justify everything in our proposal. When coming up with the implementation for our design, I did research into which parts would be necessary for our robot and why certain parts would be better than others. After doing some research into the Ultra 96-V2 FPGA and the KRIA KR260, and talking to professors and TAs, I decided that we should go forward with the Ultra 96-V2 FPGA to begin with. I did some research into Vitis and how it would be used to receive the IMU data and output signals to the motors.

Our progress is on schedule. We started to purchase a few parts, just to test out their compatibility with the FPGA and will begin testing next week. The FPGA is already ready for pickup, so I plan on setting it up so that when the motor and motor driver arrive, the integration should be smoother.  In the next week, we will continue to figure out the design and implementation of our robot, such as what materials and parts will be necessary for the platform. In the next week, we plan to have a complete list of parts necessary for the order and will place the order as soon as we have everything ready. This will ensure that we have the entire design complete so that we are well-prepared for the design presentation.