When we were all working together on Friday, one issue we noticed is that after switching to the 5V driver from the Arduino Nano, when spinning the motors, we observed that they were not spinning the same speed. This is a significant risk in that if there is disparity between the motor speeds, because of our belt setup, it would affect the manner in which our robot turns, making it not dependable or reliable. To mitigate this risk, we have two potential avenues to pursue: the first is through tuning the commands given by the microcontroller to make sure that the robot can indeed drive straight, thus allowing us to maintain the same speed for the motors manually through tuning. The second way of mitigation is through using rear wheel drive only and switching to casters on the front wheels. This is because the belt tension is causing undue force on the motor shaft, causing it to spin slower. If we convert to rear wheel drive, it removes the need for a belt in the first place.
A change made to the existing design of the system is the switch from using a Raspberry Pi Pico to an Arduino Nano. This is necessary because it allows us to drive a 5V logic as opposed to a 3.3V logic. The change does not incur any additional cost because the Arduino Nano was provided free of charge.
For an updated schedule, we are hoping to target this week to be able to drive the rover and control the servos for the arm, even if it’s a basic program to test functionality.
This video link showcases our currently assembled rover so far (sans-camera), with the motors successfully wired up and spinning!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zICyOJkQBSxv6ApgS1hE1o7wqdp9SjWX/view?usp=sharing