FLL 2024/2025 SUBMERGED℠ Season
TEAM TSUNAMI
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Mission 1: Sending over the submersible to explore opposing field's
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Mission 2: Securely dock the Research Vessel that contains samples and artifacts our team has collected.
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Mission 3: Safely release and deliver an unknown creature that has attached to the AUV to the cold seep.
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Mission 4: Feed the Whale- collecting the krill and feed the hungry whale.
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Mission 5: Secure new coral structures to grow in the nursery until till strong enough for transport to the reef.
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Mission 6: Releasing the Shark that was just tagged into its habitat.
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Mission 7: Carefully mount the new coral structure without damaging the other nearby reef segments.
TOP
BACK
Back view of our robot, we made the back of our robot flat in order to make it easier for us to line up at the start and also attached a motor at the back to do some missions.
SIDE
This is the side view, the wheels are being covered up by the plates so that our robot can line to the wall and we also left enough space at the front to attach things at the side
ONE WAY LOCK
MISSON 4- WHALE ATTACHMENT
FRONT
This is the front view, It is mainly surrounded by frames so that we can quickly swap attachments.
MAST OF SHIP
The biggest challenge for me was building the whale attachment for Mission 4- my initial attachment could not release the krill accurately into the whale's mouth as the attachment required precise alignment to the whale to trigger the release of krill. I had to rework on the push and release mechanism and redesign the attachment a few rounds to get it right. It took us a lot of recalibrations on the code and testing runs.
We made our program selection using spike, so the idea is that we don't have to exit our program after each run to go to the next. We can just press the left arrow key to run and the right arrow key to go to the next program which helps us to save time while consolidating all our code into one program file.
For movement we have learned how to make use of myblocks in spike in order to let us easily control how fast and far it will travel. Another upside of using this way to code is that it condenses all the movement that we will be using into a single block which makes our programme short and much neater.
After months of preparation and hard work we were quite disappointed that during the actual robot mission run things did not turned out as smooth as like during our practice run. Due to time pressure and being nervous there was robot inconsistency and some programming errors during the actual run and some missions could not be completed. One major challenge was maintaining consistent robot alignment during actual robot run. We agreed that we could have spent more time optimizing the calibration and repeat the full robot run for more rounds. We had been too confident. However, one thing we felt we did right was our good team communication. We worked as a team to resolve problems and encourage each other. I learnt that engineering needs a lot of patience and continuous improvement and not to be overconfident. It was overall a very meaningful learning experience for me and I'm looking forward to participating the next robotic competition.
My Reflections and What i had learnt
