Sprocket Can Move!: Week 4

Before we get to the exciting part of working wheels (eeek! it's so exciting), there are a bunch of other things that got modified this week.

First of all, our team captain and expert computer-aided designer (CADer) designed and printed a ramp the would allow the rings to flow smoothly from the floor to the intake ramp without getting stuck underneath the robot. With that problem solved, we encountered another one: the wheels we had 3D printed for the intake were too slippery.

Never fear, crafting life hacks are here! We used foam weather stripping foam tape around the rim of each wheel to give them a bit more grip. If you thought that was a strange fix, you haven't seen anything yet. We also used balloons (no I'm not kidding) to give the wheels even more grip. Each balloon was cut into a short ring and wrapped around the foam tape-wrapped wheels sort of like a thin tire. The rubber balloons have a much higher coefficient of static friction with the rings than the plastic wheels (All that means is that the rubber balloons are more grippy than the slick plastic wheels). The balloon and foam tape combination worked excellent, even though it was a bit bizarre to use those materials.

The ramp between the floor and intake ramp is added and the intake wheels are coated with foam tape and balloons.

On to the exciting part! Hardware mapping and setting up movement objects was finished early on in the week, so programming for the drive train began first. It took a little time and research to figure out which way each wheel should rotate to move the robot the correct way (Who knew mecanum wheels could be so complicated!?). By the end of the week, though, Sprocket was rolling around with the click of a button (literally)! This was amazing progress in our build and the whole team is very excited to continue building Sprocket to completion.

Sprocket moves around based on the remote control buttons. (There still seems to be a bit of wheel rotation issues, but we'll get it sorted out)