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Region V - A Spring Semester Overview

With only nine weeks until competition, UT’s Region 5 team is off to a great start this semester.

We are currently on track to have seven full weeks of testing, and the next couple of weeks involves assembly of both the field and the robot. Since we finalized our designs a few months ago in the fall semester, the stage of our robot assembly now consists of trouble shooting for issues that come up once the design is finalized.

working on the robot

Region 5’s most recent meeting

On the embedded systems side, we are currently split into three different groups: drive system, token control, and sensor input. The low-level drive system team is currently working with receiving encoder feedback and controlling our DC motors. On the other hand, the higher level group is finalizing code for movement algorithm field testing.

motor controller diagram

Motor Controller Diagram

Low-level token control is interfacing with a stepper motor and servo motor to power our token sorting system. High level token control has written test-ready code to make decisions involving our sorting strategy. And lastly, sensor input is currently compressing input data from line sensors into a readable format so that we can interface with those components in a more user-friendly way for the higher algorithms to manipulate that data. On the mechanical side, we just received our custom-waterjet aluminum frame parts from Austin Waterjet, and we are in the process of assembling our original CAD design. Our mechanical team’s current challenge is making small edits in different places around the frame to accommodate for unforeseen space management issues. In addition, we’re in the process of planning out custom mounting for our electronic components with the goal of maximizing space and creating a streamlined design. With all of this happening the next couple of weeks, our field is in construction concurrently with our technical work. We hope to have our field completely constructed within the next two weeks so that we can begin testing on schedule.

transporting field materials

Zach and Cole, Region 5 leaders, transporting field materials to campus

Join the #region-5 slack channel if interested!

Author: Meera Wakim