Wednesday, October 29, 2008

remounting the motor for the lifter

Now we have mounted the new motor it is lower to the ground so that there is less weight towards the top of the robot this is making it more stable. I think that it fits better than the older motor mounting.

lifters again

The lifters that we had on the robot where not that goood because they made the motor have to be mounted higher. So we came up with these new lifter desings they are curving around so that we will be able to mount the motor lower than before and still have the lifters flush on the ground. toby and i have decided to use the lifters that are on the left hand side of the picture. because they have more orange things and that means that there will be more chance for the lifter to get under the other robot.

testing the gearing again.

I did not like having the the lifters so close to the ground so i decided to move the larger gearing cog so that it was infront of the smaller cog so that the lifter will be higher from the ground, then we will be able to mount the motor closer to the ground. By mounting the motor closer to the ground the total center of mass will be lower and then we will be harder to flip. After testing this new gearing setup i discovered that the gear is not in the correct place because the cogs skip when it is trying to lift. I decided to just change the shape of the lifter to solve this problem.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

a better picture

this is from a bit further back...

mounting the lifter

the new lifter has been mounted onto the frame and i have just done some quick fixes so that there is all of the sensors in place this is so that Toby can start to do some more coding and like then we can put them in a bit more of a permanent place this will do for now but i think that i am going to place the gearing in a different place so i can get the motor lower but this might require me to change the lifter shapes.

just moving the NTX brain.

There was a little flaw in the robot, the NTX brain was not in the center. WE ,moved it. and now it is in the middle of the wheels so that the weight will be more evenly distributed between the 4 wheels. I think that it is better like that because we will have four wheels pushing instead of one with three spinning.

just some quick fixes

when Toby was not at school i deiced that the brain part of the NTX was not mounted that well so i put on some more mounting brackets and also moved it back over the rear wheels so that there will be more grip. also i started to move the little wheels at the front into a better spot but depending on where the lifter is it may not be the best.

time for a pusshing test...

With the small amount of programing that we have done, we have made it go forwards and backwards, now we had a little pushing battle with Shaun and Simon. I think that there robot is going to be quite good but we are only going to be using 2 motors and they are using 3. I think that we will be able to push them when we have the lifter mounted because hopefully we can lift a few of their wheels off the ground.

lifters with touch sensor.

WE put a touch sensor in the middle of the lifters so that it will lift when the touch sensor gets triggered. When the touch sensor is not pushed out they will go back down and like then when it is touched again it will start to lift. We have put a thing on the touch sensor so that that it will be able to touch things and not go through a little gap.

we have finaly done a bit of coding

We first just made our robot move forward and turn, then we coded the sensor which now senses the outline and reverses to stop itself from going out.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

day two again and again because today is friday.

this is the light sensor mounting i think it will not work because it is in the way of the motor that will be powering the lifter . but we will come up with something later. but for the moment we will be able to do some testing and make some codeing.
This is a temporary mounting for the brain part of the robot. Also note that the we have decided to not have the little swivel wheel at all because it is quite complex. But this might change depending on the testing that we do.

day two yet again,

This is the frame of the robot, the wheels and the start of the mounting bit for the brain part. We have 4 wheels at the back because we think it will give more power than having one wheel on each engine like twice the rubber so twice the friction.

day two again

Now we are improving on the lifter so that there is gearing on the the lifter to give it more torque. That will make it easier to lift the other robots. I have also mounted the movement sensor on the front of the motor, this is just a test so that it can go somewhere we may move it later.

day two

Toby made a second lifter design that does not use a contraption to power the lifter is it coming straight of the motor this is giving more power and less is lost through the powering the contraption that i was going to use to power the lifter.

day one again

ok first design for the front lifters but they do not go right around and also theyare hard to power because there is like power lost in the moving of the parts that look like a train. also it would be hard to mount a touch sensor that that would triget the lifter to lift. and the lifting height is not that bit like it is only lifting about 5-6 cm.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

day one

hi Toby and Zac here this is our robot blog. this is going to be our ideas and thoughts of our robot and hopefully we will be able to improve our robot when we look over the things we have done.