Another team meeting this week to look at where we're going and show our progress. This is more a position update blog, not much to show in a structured way but an example of where we are.
First up is a video of the sheep herder. This is the basic version in operation, not the turbo, just giving us a view of how things will pan out in the arena. The arms and flippers aren't powered and dead reckoning is used for the small amount of navigation shown.
So we have a sheep dog but it needs a bit of training! This is also the first time a chassis and attachment have been mated together, it took only a few minutes and that's how the other attachments should fit!
Also demonstrated was our change to the use of a PS3 controller for remote control operations. We'll be using this for the Farmyard Tour challenge of course but it's main job in the coming weeks is to rehearse the best sequence of operations for the chassis and attachments for testing.
We're still moving on with the apple picking attachment, the laser cut practise tree shown in the last blog entry is now assembled, needs a bit of weight adding and the apple picking cup MK2 ready for testing.
Finally the cattle feeding turntable was demonstrated. This challenge is almost ready for full testing with most of the components finalised and control code written. This is possibly the simplest attachment but still comprises 36 individual 3D printed parts, together with many nuts, bolts, servo's and a stepper motor. Hidden in there is the custom controller board as well!
The picture has been shown before but next time will be a full demo video, we've already written the routine for the video!. Its controlled via micropython on a pico.
That's it for this time, next time we'll have working sheep dog arms and a trough filling attachment!
