This week I spent most of Sunday fine tuning the presentation and practicing for the presentation. I spent Monday morning prior to presenting reviewing our design and preparing for the presentation questions. After the presentation, I spent the rest of the week researching drive trains and CADing different designs in Autodesk Fusion 360. After researching and discussing we settled on a tank-drive system rather than a Rocker-Bogie suspension drive system. I drew both of these up in CAD just incase we want to implement the Rocker-Bogie at a later date. I also designed the modular baseplate to be able to mount our different robotic modules to the base of the robot. We decided that a peg-board type system would be best for experimentation and development.
In addition to working on the physical CAD I also touched up my PCB skills and drew up the basic PCB layout for the user controller. I found a button that could perform in the manner we wanted and that was similar to a computer key. I am currently researching methods to convert an analog high signal into USB protocol to then communicate with the Raspberry Pi on the user side.
My progress is right on schedule but I need to complete the CAD for the robot body this week. I will need to wait for Varun’s robotic arm design to properly scale parts to make sure the robot is stable. I will have the PCB completed on the user side by the end of this next week and I will have the entirety of the drive train and body of the robot mapped out. I also need to continue researching electronic speed controllers (ESCs) and other electronic components that I want to incorporate into our design.