Oh, Brother!

Brother hit a huge milestone today! He drove for the very first time. Everyone was so excited for him. Creating the code to make him drive was no easy task. The girls worked hard all morning to figure it out. When he first tried to drive, his x-axis directions were mixed up, but the girls cleared that up. The team also worked with cameras today. They will help the team to see what I am doing when I am on the opposite side of the field. They experimented with connecting the camera feeds to the driver station screen.

Now that Brother is driving, he needs to be safe. His hard metal frame could hurt someone if he accidentally crashed. For this reason, the girls added pool noodles to his frame as a makeshift bumper.

Today, some girls worked on making a different ball gathering mechanism for me. It is a pool noodle piece wrapped in gaffer tape with surgical tubing bristles hanging off of it. It worked really well when they spun it! 

Today, a lot of work went into changing me from a bunch of metal, gears, bolts, and wheels to a functional robot. While I'm not at all close to being as functional as Brother, I'm moving along. First, my electronics shelves with hinges were completed. Then, the girls worked on setting up my pneumatics. They also began wiring me. My power distribution board, roboRIO, circuit breaker, pneumatics control module, and voltage regulator module are all mounted and wired as much as they can be for now. The girls will wire me more when my motor controllers come in the mail. My battery case is also mounted.

Some other girls finished building the drawbridge for me today! 

I am adoring spending all day (except when I am sleeping, of course!) with my team. Soon, when term break is over, our schedules will switch up a bit and I will only spend a few hours with them after school each day plus the weekends. Even though it will be less time, I know that we will make the most of every minute we have together!