This week was way less productive than I wanted it to be. Sunday was dedicated to finishing up the CAD for the rover and finalizing our design review presentation. While I did not accomplish much in terms of completing design tasks for the rover beyond the CAD, I spent a lot of time learning how to calculate kinematics for the motion of the rover. I should be able to start working on the software system for the drive train. Since the drive train and the design are now finalized I was able to calculate the RPM we need the motor to spin to meet our target max speed of 0.5m/s. Given the fact the wheels are 2.5 inches in diameter we need to have an RPM of 150 to be at the maximum of our driving speed. I have began to relearn and mess around with Arduino code from the following sources that are inspiring the PCB design:
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Unfortunately I fell ill towards the end of the week and I have not been able to fabricate parts with Varun; nor have I been super productive. However, I am finally back on schedule and the time I’ve taken to learn kinematics and review Arduino programming will definitely streamline things in the future. In the next week I will finalize the PCB design and test my Arduino code with a basic breadboarded circuit. I will also help out as much as I can with fabricating the physical rover. Once again we are very proud of our CAD so here is another angle:
