I started the week by assembling and testing a smaller fork manipulator. I keyed the bar that spans across the new design so that it wouldn’t rotate in the socket. This allowed me to add a notch into the center of the bar to lock the rotation of hook it is designed to grab. after testing how to possibly bend the bar so that the hook would automatically rest into it’s slot, I realized that it would be unfeasible with the current design. I abandoned this idea and assembled the prototype for Wednesday’s testing.
While I was doing this work, I re-painted the claws and added highlights to the ends. These highlights allow the pilot to more easily visualize the perspective and close distances through the front camera.
One Wednesday, I helped with testing in the pool. unfortunately, around 40 minutes, I bumped the manipulator, revealing a major issue with the system. The receiver broke. This showed that this component needed to be resin printed rather than being made out of petg.
Thankfully we had other testing to do in the pool, separate from pilot training. Me and Miles worked on tuning and fixing the PIDs. We called my brother, so that he could remind us of what each aspect of a PID did.
We then used that information to start tuning the pitch PID. However after half an hour of trying and failing to perfect the values of the formula, I realized that the PID code was flawed.
The issue was that the code would adjust it’s set goal value, a value that should stay constant. After another hour of working with Miles to try and fix the issue, we came down from the pool.
On Thursday I was at the school science, in which I got second place. I decided to donate the $200 prize money to the robotics team.
