Apr 19, 2021
Success!
Welcome to the final blog post in this Design II module.
In this post I would like to tie up a few loose ends and comment on a few aspects of this project. But first, what you have all been waiting for, the successful course navigation and ping pong ball catch:
I would like to note that although I successfully managed to get the ball in to the basket first time in this video, this did not happen every single try. I was shooting the launcher from approximately 120cm away from the Robot and I had a success rate of catching the ball first time of about 1 in 4 tries. This was likely due to a number of factors such as friction between the wheels and the track, the unavoidable drifting of the robot, the small size of the basket (7.5cmx10cm) and the varying angle of projection of the launcher.
Shown is the code I implemented to achieve this robot motion. This code did not take as long as expected to understand and break down, the hard part was the trial and error I had to attempt, in order to allow the robot to execute the course how it did. It was difficult to mathematically work out the values of each ‘delay’ due to the amount of varying factors mentioned above. (The return journey for the code will be pictured further below)
As a comment I would like to mention that for the Robot’s basket, I used an empty paperclip box that I zip tied to the top of the Robot. I would also like to add that after a number of tries, I decided to add a counterweight to the front of the robot to avoid it toppling over. For this I used a small stone that weighs approximately 150g. As well as this alteration I also placed a gel Ice pack pouch (unfrozen) into the basket to dampen the ping pong ball as it landed to avoid it bouncing out.
To conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed my second semester of Engineering Design II and I am very proud of all of the work I have put in over both semesters. I have greatly improved my skills in coding, Solidworks and particularly in blogging. Blogging for me was the most difficult part of this assignment as I struggle greatly with publicly posting any of my written work as I am dyslexic.
Thank you for following me along on my journey through this module and I hope to be back blogging again soon about future Engineering projects.
Ruth x
