Today we got close to finishing the rollers for the belts. The bumper mounts are complete and we found some cool resonance when you bump them together (see video below).

We also made significant progress with OpenCV, however it is quite slow compared to the previous custom code.  We will find ways to optimize it for speed later once the functionality is up to par.

As we have access to a large indoor space this Friday, we are building a prototype ball launcher that closely replicates  that of our actual robot to experimentally determine air resistance. While we have done the kinematics for an optimized basketball shot, after some research we found that air resistance could play a role in altering the ball’s position.

As you can see below, we created a cool animated gif image of the frame pieces to give you a glance at what our frame will look like before getting welded. Note that the set of aluminium that holds up the middle section is merely a placeholder.

So far, it is looking as though we will have our welded parts by Thursday at the latest. We began machining the plastic rollers to carry the balls up to our shooter. The mounts for the bumpers are almost done and the bumper material is somewhat put together.

After having much difficulty with custom code for filtering, we have decided to test OpenCV again. We may end up using an OpenCV algorithm with custom code for maximal efficiency.

We machined some nice angled pieces today. To do this, we used a home-made sine bar. Although it did not work perfectly, we did our best.

New code differentiates between vertical and horizontal lines, filtering all other lines and noise. We will post a video shortly.

We also built an awesome compact speaker mount for our extra set. This way, we can easily transport it outside, in the machine machine shop, or anywhere we need, without having tangled wires. This is simple, safer, and just plain cool.

As usual, the machining continued. We pumped out several more pieces today (see bottom photo) for our drive-train. So far, it’s looking as though we will be able to get the base welded on Monday.

We also cut out the wood for our bumpers today out of 3/4″ Birch plywood. Keep in mind that we are building two robots this year. One set is for red, the other blue.

We bought a 4X4 sheet of 3/4″ plywood today to start building bumpers. The McMaster order arrived, so we quickly got to work on those parts. As usual, there was more and more machining today. Because it is Friday, convinced our supervisor to stay late so we could continue working into the night.

We are experimenting with some new gallery options to display images on this website. Look out for some neat JQuery applications!

The old test bot