The major milestone for the project is the Mechatronics design symposium on March 17th, 2017. By then it is expected that a functional prototype of Centaur is ready for public demonstration.
In the past few weeks, the team has been busy working towards a few major milestones.
- February 20th, Robot Arm and Vision System Integration
- Feb 22nd, Drive system calibration with full load
- March 1st, System integration and Testing
The goal is by March 1st, all design and construction work has been completed and the remaining time will be spent on integration and writing the software suite.
Here is a breakdown on what each team member has been working on:
- I (Eric Shi) have been working on implementing PID controls for our drive system, remote driving, setting up the onboard computer, implementing our power distribution system, wiring everything up in the drive compartment of the robot.
- Wesley Fisher has been working on developing the motion planning and simulation package for the robotic arm. He also been working on interfacing with the pipe thickness ultrasonic transducer.
- Adam Heins has been working on the vision system that will be used to guide the robot arm. Adam is working closely with Wesley in preperation of integrating the motion planning with the vision system.
- Jesse Lopes has been working on the design and fabrication of the lift mechanism for the robot arm. He is finalizing the simulations and will be machining the lift in the next week
- Rahul Rawat is simulating the algorithms that be used to help the robot navigate in a known environment using laser scanners