Post #11 - Final Blog Post

It's been an incredible ride... never in my dreams would I have thought that I, Neil Emeigh, would be capable of building robots that are as scalable as our design is. Industrial robots are not far fetched from our knowledge at this point, and that's something I still have to pinch myself for to remind myself it is real.

Our robot had many hiccups and headaches, but we finally achieved a final product that we set out for. During the initial build phase we have come across MANY design flaws that we plan on making more efficient in the future. This prototype is for demonstration and proof-of-concept that we are able to do such a thing.

Here is the robot in action:

[video]


Taylor and I both plan on continuing with the build of this robot in the future, as well as many other robotic designs we have already brainstormed up. This was such an incredible experience that I'll never forget. I owe my thanks to the CS department and Dr. Hastings for allowing us to do such a project and for believing in us throughout the journey.

Total hours: We slacked on keeping track of this as the time required for this project was too many and we were more concerned with getting a final product done than recording all the details with the steps we took. Our project was a stretch to complete in a semester's time, but we put the hours in to get it finished on time. If I were to estimate, it took us about 100-150 hours each from start to finish.

Post #10 - Motors Running!!!!

After a stressful week, we finally got the motors moving thanks to Dr. Trantham (Physics department). Although he suggested our power source was too strong, we determined that wasn't the case and saw that his wiring diagram suggested our wires weren't set up correctly. After switching the wires around our motor moved!! This was SUCH a relieving feeling and an incredible boost of motivation.

Throughout the week we played with stepper motor libraries and different settings. We attached the motor to our robot frame (found on Taylor's blog: tfcsis496.blogspot.com) and had it spinning as it should.

Next week, our final full week of working on it, will be spent hooking up the solenoid valves and hooking up the robot to UNK's internet to prepare for our live demonstration.