Day 9 - 2nd week of the competition
AMOS:

It is the second and also the last week of the Robocon competition. All the teams are busy testing out the ability of their robots, as well as familiarising with the control of the robot, followed by minor modifications and optimisations. After all, regardless of how good the robot is, good control is required to fully utilise the robot's potential.




JAVIER:

Today we kind of completed our first robot. It successfully stuck the items on the wall. It was kind of a great achievement for us as we met with many many problems for that robot. We broke a gearbox, wasted a whole sheet of aluminum and nearly tore it apart. Seeing it do what it did made me feel so accomplished of what my team could achieve in merely 5 days.

In the design of the robot, we employed physics concepts like moment and torque. I really appreciate why we study physics and mathematics now. It is not just some random abstract calculations or theories. They can all be applied to explain and predict real stuff. Even thought our first milestone has been reached, we still have a long way to go before we can complete everything.

Oh anyway, fun fact of the day. Every station in Japan plays a different melody when passengers alight.


MERI:

We've almost completed the robots! Just need a bit of touching up - to make sure it's within the 50x50x50 cube, and to ensure that the robot arm is firm enough to pick up the balls multiple times without getting damaged. After trying out the robots today, we realised that they are pretty hard to control as the big motors are really powerful (which is good, if we have enough time to practise controlling them). At this moment, the robot is moving rather jerkily and controlling the long arm is no small feat either. Hope that we'll be able to complete the robots soon so that we can start practising controlling them. (The 90 second game is really short, so we'll have to be really efficient and comfortable using them.)

Below is the robot that's meant to pick up the balls and put them on the wall. It now has a velcro arm that can pick up the ball easily and yet, let it stick on the wall without too much difficulty. Only problem is that the hand is really flimsy as it is quite hard to attach to the bamboo pole.


Below is the other robot that's meant to collect the golden balls from the bridge and bring them to the previous robot so that they can be put on the wall.


After our workshop ended, Joe (the one on keyboard) brought us jamming but I left quite early as I wanted to get started on some school work (I'm currently missing lessons back in Singapore...)





Check back again for more updates!