Week 6:
This was the second week for testing our robots and attempting to get a time recorded for the ‘Tip The Can’ challenge. We had to put all of our focus into this week to see if we could resolve the hidden errors and get our team a time on the board. Of course, if we got a time this week, it would not be worth as much as those who managed to get one last week. But still, one time is better than no time.
This week we made a complete change to the chassis and got rid of the cardboard entirely. We found it had been interfering with the design when trying to make sure the switch was sticking out at the front and could still be accessed without picking it up.
I then got to work by examining all of the parts of the robot that had soldering to make sure there were none that had snapped or connected with a part it wasn’t supposed to. James checked all of the wiring to make sure that each wire was in the right location on the bread board. Brent had a look at the coding to make sure all of it added up correctly and there wasn’t any part missing.
Once everything had been cleared for working we brought it to the testing ring to see if it would work. Again, we were met with more bad news and our robots sensors could not locate the ‘Can’. We asked Gavin, one of our lecturers, to see if he could help in any way. He had a look at each element and suggested we change an aspect of the code that correlated with the sensor. It seemed to bring a more positive result at our station so we brought it back to the testing ring once more. Sadly, our robot would not function how we were hoping.
All that we could do is accept defeat and prepare to move on to the next challenge, ‘Robo Sumo’ next week.
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