Design Constraint Issue

A major setback occurred in the past week when the design was measured to be 25 cm X 22 cm, which was over the design constraints of 20 cm X 20 cm. With little time left and a solid design in place, it was time to figure out how to shrink the design. One thing that was easy to see was the empty space around the brick in the design so the plan was to modify the frame of the bot so that it to closely fit to the brick. Upon making the modifications, the mechanical team realized another problem was the long, slanted front end so it was removed and replaced with a small wall shown in Figure 12. Furthermore, a box-like structure was place on the back of the robot to protect the light sensor shown in Figure 13. Besides the aforementioned changes and the differences in the sensor positions, the overall design remained relatively similar to the larger design as shown in Figure 14. Also, it fits into the design constraints coming in at 20 cm X 19 cm and weighing .7941 kg.

Figure 12. Front of smaller design

Figure 13. Back of smaller design

Figure 14. Side of small design

In the next few days before the competition, the code will need to be tested with the smaller design to make sure it is competition ready, which includes changing the sensor trigger values to take into account the new placements and the resulting ambient light for the light sensors. Despite the setback, this smaller version should be able to compete near the level of the larger design and there is a lot of confidence in the team that the robot will be victorious!

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