We have been moving along slowly but have made steady progress. We originally wanted to start laser cutting our foamcore robot model by today but we are currently fixing our Solidworks model to ensure all the individual parts mesh together in a way that we can construct the robot when we laser cut our foamcore board. There are quite a few hole mounts we need to create to account for components that we want to secure onto the base and sensors we want to mount towards the floor. We also have to make sure our robot is less than 11 inches tall (not including the beacon), currently it is a couple inches above that limit. The bottom base have holes for the pipe mounts, bumper supports, caster wheels, and 2nd floor attachment. We designed our ammo plunger with a sharp end. Since the ammo depot requires very little force to be pushed to let the balls out, we decided the best way to do so is to apply as much pressure at one point. Until we print out ammo plunger we can't mount our bump sensors just yet.

Currently, Luis and Edmond are working on the solidworks CAD model of the robot, Luis is starting our code modules that make up the robot functionality, Aaron is working on the solenoid circuit and did some solidworks modeling, Jake completed his PVC tube CAD model and started prototyping our track wire circuit, and Edmond is responsible for keeping the website up to date.

The track wire circuit prototype is functional but can only detect the signal within one inch of the sensor. We considered amplifiying the signal and already have a gain of one thousand but doing so also amplifies noise so we refrained from more gain for now until our filter is working because we just want to hit min spec. We are also working on a solenoid circuit to be able to control them with the Uno32 stack. We find two TIP122 transistors are required because the solenoids we salvaged from the printer have three wires, one for power and two to sink current from which makes the solenoid either push or pull. Finally we made our tape sensors and are ready to start soldering them onto a perfboard.

EDIT: Unfortunately our plans tonight were cut short. We were ready to laser cut most of our robot in foamcore but are unable to do so because it has malfunctioned. It didn't get fixed before the entrace is locked out at 10PM so we have to do it tomorrow.