Adam:

Nothing much has happened this week, me and Jacob have redesigned a few parts of the jaws, assembled them and patiently waited for the rest of the arm to be completed.

Adrian:

I decided to hardcode movements into the Arduino IDE to have something ready for testing, even if this method wasn’t my original goal. I made two different programs to test the complete assembly. One program uses buttons on the keyboard to move individual joints and servos, while the other utilizes a joystick. The X-axis controls the rotation of the base, while the Y-axis extends and retracts the arm.

Farah:

Mesh Corrections: I used Blender extensively to fix issues with the robot’s meshes provided by the mechanical team. Adjusted pivot points, rotations, and orientations. replaced the incorrect mesh files in arduinobot_description/meshes with corrected versions. I then modified URDF files Adrian gave it me to reflect changes in the meshes. tested the robot model in RViz to ensure accurate visualization.

Challenges

Mesh Inaccuracies: Original meshes had incorrect pivot points and orientations, causing problems in simulations, I tried and tried to fix this issue but it never got resolve, and I had to move on to complete the project so the simulations mot not competed in time.

Learning Blender and unity: during the course of the project this project I gained proficiency in Blender and unity to make necessary corrections efficiently.

Jacob:

Me and Adam assembled the redesigned mechanical claw, but sadly the redesign of the whole arm was not ready, so we could start the assembly. In the meantime we prepared stuff for the assembly.

Sergi:

During this week while the computer science team was testing the arm movement they noticed that one servomotor wasn’t working so we had to remove it and change it. Also we changed 2 continuous rotation servomotor to the standard ones, because for the programmers it’s easier to programm and also we don’t need continous rotation motors in the arm. So the arm servomotors are now standard ones (180 deg).

Also during this week I watched some videos on how to make a FEM analysis becasue in my case I have never done it before so it was completly new for me.

Some of the videos that I watched are the ones that follow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=nAhd4_bveTA&ab_channel=3DProductDesigning%26FEA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMwTWco_DA&ab_channel=MTEngineering

The FEM analysis is a very important part, to be able to see how much weight/force the robot can lift and also to find the most weak points or parts of our robot, where it is easier to break.