How Engineers Spent Their Holidays!

Hey readers! During the semester break, our team took time out during the holidays to build a robot from scratch with materials that can be found in school. With the help of our lecturers as well as friends from Mechanical Engineering, we managed to learn and reciprocate it to build a prototype of our robot. Read on to find out more about our journey so far!

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Holidays: Week 1

Initial Objectives and Task

Robot Design

Testing the Motor Driver

Using Navigation Stack

Power Management

Connection of robot

Interfacing the different parts

Initial Timeline

During the first week of the holidays, we took time out to come back to discuss with our supervisor as well as lecturer what is the objective and task that the robot would have to do. After doing so, we went into detail as to what each task requires

We then worked on coming up with a timeline that we can follow and complete by the then known deadline. We struggled a little with this as we had to made sure that each task would be done concurrently such that we can finish them in time. We also had to make sure that the workload was split evenly between the three of us.

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Holidays: Week 2 - 6

Power Schematics

Battery Holder

Mock Placement of Parts

Testing Base

Base Layer of the First Prototype

Lathe Machine

Hard at Work

Motor block

Preparation Work

For the rest of the holidays, we did our best to complete the different parts of the robot that we were assigned, working towards a project assessment that we have on the first week of school.

"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is practice." -Vladimir Horowitz.

We struggled while working on the different aspects of the robot, as we each had to explore and learn skills that we did not possess. For example, we had to work with a foreign and different operating system, Robot Operating System (ROS), which we did not have the knowledge in and also learn mechanical skills we did not have.

However, we are very thankful for the guidance we had from our lecturers as well as friends who taught us and guided us so as to improve and learn new skills.

Here's a quick gif that we did of the process of fixing up the base layer of our robot.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more updates coming up. :-)

Just got to keep fighting