Work Completed
This week in robotics and mechatronics was more on theory and practice presentations. Our last round of presentations in semester 1 (i believe) went pretty well. I scored pretty highly in that which has given me a confidence boost in my ability to present which has aided me multiple times since. Mainly, the work done to prepare for that task taught me how to present. The task itself wasn’t too bad either; we had to compare our task to the rubric and state what mark we believe we should get and why. We spent some time in class practicing how to do this. We have the same presentation in week 6, so we want to know how to approach all the points. We’ve mainly been breaking down the presentation into small parts, i.e doing a small section and then discussing with the teacher what’s good and what’s not.
The other part of this week has been me looking at how to strengthen my motors for Winston. I think the torque is good enough, and that it is more of a structural issue with the leg. I plan to rework the exterior of the leg to help support the motors better, but currently the issue lies in the attachment of the belt to the motor itself. My first thought with this was stepper motors, as they have long rods built in. I was looking into this last week too, but found that we had some in class so I got to have a closer look. They are much heavier than I expected, which could lead to some issues. I am also unsure about their torque capabilities. Ideally, I would have that rod attachment on the current motors. I do think that this is possible, but I would have to work hard on it in the coming weeks, as the deadline of week 15 is creeping up on me.
Reflection
I finally got around to looking physically at different motors. Unfortunately, that is all I did. I need to do a lot more work this week if I want any chance to have Winston walking by the submission date. I do still believe that this should be achievable with the current motors, and just changing the design of the leg either in printing or any of the other non-electric attachments. This theory is likely why I have not done much work – I feel that it will be a relatively easy fix. I need to start it this week if I want that to be true, however.
In terms of the presentation, I am feeling confident in my ability to present, as well as accurately check off all the boxes of the rubric to a satisfactory level. The only thing I think that would drag me down now is the incompleteness of the project. For that reason too I need to start work ASAP. These last few blog posts have been short as I try to get back into doing work that I can discuss, but hopefully this is the last time this happens (I think I said that in the previous post, but surely this time its true…).