We came up with a few designs for the Claw on each of our robot. One claw would have 2 sides like a pincher. One of the sides will move in a circle, and the other will be stationary. We found that this claw was very successful in picking up Botguy, so we attached it to the Create. We decided to have the create will go after Botguy because it is faster than the CBC and consequently can grab Botguy more quickly than the CBC could.
Another design we came up with was a pincher type claw which used two gears to attempt to grab windmills. We found that this was not able to pick up the windmills (pencils) in the couplers effectively, so we attached rubber bands to each side of the pincher increased the reliability of the pincher in grabbing and then holding onto the windmills.
We drew several designs for the CBC robot, which we decided to name the Beetle based of the color of the CBC controller. One design used 2 motors for the drive train of the Beetle with the motors being placed at the rear of the robot. These motors would be attached to the robot using Lego Axles. The Lego axles did not work well because they fell through the holes in the beam causing the motors to move out of place.
For another design we used IFI Parts to attach the two motors together. This really kept the motors stable and did not cause the motors to fall out like the Lego axles did.
Simulation
Simulations: One of the major tasks that we had to accomplish was getting to the blue walls as fast as we could. In order to accomplish this we went through several steps.First: We gathered as a group and threw around ideas. We had a team leader and a note taker. The leader guided the discussion while our the note taker wrote down all of the plans which were proposed.
Second: Everyone drew diagrams of what they felt would be the best design and groups of team members checked the piece kit to make sure that all proposed solutions could be created using the pieces provided.
Third: We made a pro and con sheet in order to debate the advantages of each proposed design. We then discussed which proposal seemed to be the best idea till we reached a consensus as to which designs would be implemented.
Fourth: we checked our proposed designs against how the blue balls actually rolled down from the peak on the actual game board in order to make sure that our simulated designs did not conflict with other pieces on the game board. We used the claws we prototyped earlier in this test, but we did not have them attached to a robot during this simulation.