Character vs Personality - Week 3

Our meetings this week have been building upon Shahzeb’s Mirza’s talk on gear and gear ratios. Miguel drew the conclusion on directly attaching the servo itself to the motor. Matthew then changed the code to work in radians instead of degrees as advised. We set a deadline for next Tuesday to test the claw itself. Foregoing mathematically modelling the arc length of the claw. A 5° (yes I know) movement by the servo will not translate to the same movement due to gear ratios.

On the topic of the design, we now have the first prints for the claw and structure of the arm itself. Milly has uploaded her designs of the 10 button control box on AutoCad and will be laser cutting this week before labs on Friday. Matthew and Miguel have simulated up to 3 servos on TinkerCad and written code for each individual servo with its own parameters. We decided not to simulate all five servos on the TinkerCad and have moved on to creating the entire circuit initially on a breadboard. Then we discussed the magnitude of resistors we will use for the servos. The speed of the motor depends on the current; everything needs to be balanced.

How the stress will be distributed in the arm was another issue raised, below Matthew briefly explains why it's important to be mindful of how the arm extends:

“We can set parameters on the servos to reduce the angles they can move between to reduce the potential stress on the servos when the arm is fully extended. This can be done within the code to each individual servo so not all servos are restricted. For example, we might not want the base vertical movement servo to move lower than 30 degrees (yes we know) as if the arm is lower than this it could topple or have lots of stress applied to itself.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ls9FLLFwLA

The success of our laboratory session on Friday is owed to timing how long we worked coupled with scheduled breaks. These last two weeks will see us as a team ramp up the intensity of each session which leads me to the topic I gave this week. The relationship between comfort zone and character vs personality. I first started the meeting with a video of Elon Musk’s SpaceX initiative successfully landing a rocket after launch. SpaceX owes its rivalled success to cost cutting and completing seemingly impossible projects like recycling rocket parts. In short our character is what makes us unique and sets us as individuals in stone, for example how we were raised, the building blocks of who were and even our accents. Personality contrasts this since it is molded over time with the people we meet and the trials we go through. With comfort zones, we have three main ‘circles’, the anxiety zone, curious zone and inner comfort zone. Going from the outside in.

This ties into the foreseeable end of this project, we need to push ourselves and clock in the overtime to see the completion of this project. This includes stepping way outside of the comfort zone and sacrificing other activities and even sleep. Unlike Musk, allegedly when he started out in early endeavours was was push members to the anxiety zone leading to collapse. So we need to take these next two weeks to mold our personality into more efficient and skillful members by moving our comfort zone. By doing this, we invest in our futures by molding our personality to become skilled roboticists. We aren't just more employable, but rest in the awareness to rise to the challenge again. SpaceX initiative of landing of the rockets is a perfect example of thinking outside the box, defying industry standards and stepping outside the comfort zone. Which I know each and everyone of us can do.

Keith Marange

Project Manager