Robotics
Journal 7/11
We were introduced to the course with a moral lesson on the pebbles that represent little packets of information that you can choose to pick up during courses and life in general. We also covered the course schedule, which includes a dissection activity and presentations on the book 'The Truth About Tesla.' During our first lab of COSMOS, we began working with the Lego Mindstorms robots, with each person constructing the same bot that could be programmed using RobotC. Using my completed robot and the remainder of class time, I started on the first coding challenges, which turning one full rotation and following a triangle.
Journal 7/12
Today, we had another opportunity to continue working through the coding challenges. After struggling through turning in a square accurately, I realized that abstracting everything away made the whole process a lot easier. Suddenly, drawing a capital 'G' only required a few function calls: forward, turn right, forward, turn right, semi-circle clockwise! After that was finished, I built an obstacle course for the robots along with a few other students. So far, I have only managed to complete it when neither Eli nor Dr. Dad-Del were watching, but hopefully I'll be able to get that more consistent on Wednesday.
Journal 7/13
Today, Dr. Dad-del gave us an example of a mechanical dissection using a motor-powered sprayer. Then, during the lab, we continued work on the coding challenges. I finally finished the obstacle course, after which I began work on a line-following algorithm using a color sensor. The final challenges, line music and random walk, have yet to be completed.
Journal 7/14
During lab today, I finished the set of coding challenges and began designing a skittle sorter robot with Jinu (after being set up with more and more extensions on the random walk algorithm). We haven't built much yet, but we sketched out a design that involves a conveyor with a carriage and a slow ramp to drop skittles one by one. In the future, it might be a good idea to draft a solid prototype before getting too involved in the building aspect (just based on experience from FRC robotcs).
Journal 7/15
Today, we only had a short lecture for robotics. Dr. Dad-del continues to inquire about everyone's sleep schedules, and so far I've been at 8 hours all the way through. After the introduction, we watched a slide presentation by Kevin and Prisha on our book, The Truth About Tesla. I was quite impressed with what they were able to do in only a few days (even the slide theme was on point). Finally, Lucas dissected a mechanical flashlight that stored energy temporarily in a capacitor. This way, the light can stay on for a while even after the human stops operating the crank.
Journal 7/18
I enjoyed our lesson today because we covered the binary system, as well as position-based counting systems in general. Dr. Dad-del had us convert numbers into base 2, 7, and 16, and we explained various strategies for doing so as well. After that, Kevin and William gave a presentation on Chapter 1 of The Truth About Tesla, which focused on the nature of patents and the myth of the lone genius. At the end of class, Prisha dissected some old headphones that used a diaphragm to emit sound. Then, during lab, I started working on the mechanical hand that my group is building for the final project. So far, we have four basic fingers attached to a large palm and three robot brains. I'm predicting that we'll finish early, so we may add some other limbs as well.
Journal 7/18
I enjoyed our lesson today because we covered the binary system, as well as position-based counting systems in general. Dr. Dad-del had us convert numbers into base 2, 7, and 16, and we explained various strategies for doing so as well. After that, Kevin and William gave a presentation on Chapter 1 of The Truth About Tesla, which focused on the nature of patents and the myth of the lone genius. At the end of class, Prisha dissected some old headphones that used a diaphragm to emit sound. Then, during lab, I started working on the mechanical hand that my group is building for the final project. So far, we have four basic fingers attached to a large palm and three robot brains. I'm predicting that we'll finish early, so we may add some other limbs as well.
Journal 7/19
We only had about 45 minutes of class time today before the tour, so we didn't get to do much. Mainly, I remember the story that Dr. Dad-del told us about a student of his that greatly improved her work habits by taking after a friend of hers. The friend's strategy was to read up on the lecture material the day before and prepare questions to ask before the lecture even began. This way, he ended up with a solid understanding of each topic while always being ahead on his work as well.
Journal 7/20
Today, we started with a presentation on Chapter 2 of The Truth About Tesla, which covered Tesla's lifetime achievements and internal conflicts. I thought it was especially interesting that the presenters decided to focus on what makes a genius. After that, I dissected my calculator (and mistook a battery for a capacitor), and Parsa explained the dissection of a shampoo dispenser. During lab, we continued work on the robot hand, attaching a thumb to the side using a triangle base and plugging in wires for all ten motors. We have yet to add a way for the user to control the fingers, aside from a pressure plate on the palm that causes the hand to close.
Journal 7/22
We had another Tesla presentation today, on Chapter 3 of the book. Chapter 3 teaches the basics of electricity and explains the difference between AC and DC power. When reading the chapter, I found the analogies and in-depth explanations for the AC/DC system really helpful for getting a solid understanding. After the presentation, we had a couple dissections, including an old DVD player that had an interesting analog system for reading discs based on its notches. Then, during the writing class, we drew up a wire map and did some project management for the robot hand(s), because our group is so large.
Journal 7/25
Today, we had a presentation on Chapter 4 of The Truth About Tesla, which was about the AC polyphase motor that Tesla invented, along with the split-phase edition of that same mechanism. During lab, we decided to refactor the robot hand project. Four group members split off to work on a new project, leaving us with five contributors. Instead of constructing two hands and corresponding arms, we switched to programming one hand and having a subgroup of three people work on a mechanical piano. The piano will be controlled by a single 'finger' on a conveyor, but it will also be somewhat compatible with the hand. So far, we have 20 keys mounted together, color-coded by pitch.
Journal 7/26
Today, we spent lab working on the new robot piano. We worked mainly on improving its structure, because the piano was flimsy and bent easily when held up. We also began wiring all of the sensors, plugging in four brains to account for all 20 sensors. Connecting the brains to the piano will be challenging, but it should also improve the structure significantly.
Journal 7/27
We started class with a presentation on Chapter 5 of The Truth About Tesla, which covered the induction coil as well as the Tesla Coil. While I was somewhat confused by the content, it seems like induction coils transfer electricity using the overlapping magnetic fields of two separate coils of wire (one charged). If the second wire is coiled more times than the first, the induced voltage will be greater than the original. During lab, Dhruv and I continued to improve the structural aspects of the piano, attaching brains and reinforcing them using a flat plate on the bottom of the object. Afterwards, we began working on the conveyor system for the finger. So far, we have a long chain of small gears, where every fourth gear is attached to a wheel that will spin the belt. We plan to power two of the wheels in the middle using motors, as these seem have more of an affect on the other wheels (because of less leverage on either side).
Journal 7/29
Today, we learned about Chapter 6 of The Truth About Tesla, which covered electromagnetic resonance and Tesla's inventing history. We also had a device dissection by Akshat on a calculator similar to mine, although he had to pry apart the motherboard in order to expose the buttons underneath whereas my calculator just had screws. Dr. Dad-del gave us the rest of the morning for building, and so Dhruv and I worked on a backbone for the string of gears we had built on Wednesday. While we didn't get that far, our structure is quite stable and can easily attach and detach from the main piano. Our next goal will be attaching a finger and then programming the piano.
Journal 8/1
Today, we had a presentation on the final chapter of The Truth About Tesla, which summarized the inventor's creations and legacy. After that, we spent the whole day working on our build. After attaching the chain to our string of gears, we realized that the entire mechanism wouldn't work without constant skipping. To fix this, we designed a new mechanism using alternating large and small gears that interface with a string of moving linear gears. This way, the linear gears only interact with the larger gears, which all spin in the same direction. The finger will be connected on top of the linear gear platform.
Journal 8/2
Today, we continued our new design for the piano finger. After spending the entire morning and evening on fabrication, we were able to finish the structure, along with all of the wiring. After that, we made a program that takes in a string of human-readable notes and plays them one by one using the finger. So far, we have code for hot cross buns and twinkle twinkle little star. The next step is to code a music-reading finger that converts color sensor data to sound.
Journal 8/3
Today, Jinu and I gave a presentation on Tesla Motor Company. We covered the history of electric cars, the history of Tesla, and some popular models. We spent the rest of the day continuing construction with the robot piano. After struggling with the conveyor system for some time, we decided to have walls on the sides of the track instead of on the actual carriage. This way, the track walls wouldn't get stuck on the gears. We also added a partial roof to the track that would just scrape over the top of the carriage, which made skipping practically impossible.
Journal 8/4
Today, we finished fabrication and coding for the automatic piano. We had to replace the partial roof with a series of pegs, because the smooth pieces would occasionally catch on the carriage. But after a lot of guess and check, we were able to get all of our functions consistent enough to film a short video on the piano. We also finished making the slideshow, and we've made some additional slides to print out for our poster.
