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The final design of the robot clearly shows that the chassis extends to within .5 inches from the floor and the wheels and gearboxes are enclosed in steering towers. Each of the three wheels is steered by a vertically mounted servo which has a 24 tooth gear attached to the servo arm via four screws and epoxy. The gear mounted on the output shaft of the servo directly meshes with the teeth in the turntable providing a relatively slop free setup that allows for good directional accuracy and precision. Each of the three gearboxes utilizes three stages of reduction for a total gear ratio of 35:1. With three motors driving the robot this gear ratio was ample to produce a robot with some pushing power. The approximate top speed of the robot was .75m/sec. As should now be evident the final version of our robot had quite impressive handling capabilities. However we found out that making our design “intelligent” was a very formidable task. More so, even making our robot follow simple commands such as follow a line or look for intersections was rather difficult. Although we succeeded in making the robot scoop up a ball when we aimed it, we knew that in the contest we would not be fortunate enough to have the ball directly in front of the robot. This meant that we would have to be able to discern whether there is a ball in the scoop, to raise it appropriately. As the competition drew near, we began to realize that although we had a very good mechanical design, our software difficulties would severely limit the capabilities of our robot. |
