Weegee is looking better than ever. He is getting built up and ready for stop build day.
Question: “Well, what features does he have. I want to learn more!”
Answer: Well, hypothetical person that asks questions I just made up, you’re in luck. Weegee, has his vacuum manipulator I wrote about previously. To sum it up, it uses a vacuum to grab onto the cargo, a rubber ball.
This is the vacuum manipulator.
Question:“Well, I watched the animation, and the cargo looks like it has to be raised to be put into some of the bays. What is your plan with that?”
Answer: We have a linear slide which moves the manipulator up and down. “What is a linear slide?” Wow! You ask great questions. To quote Wikipedia: “A linear-motion bearing or linear slide is a bearing designed to provide free motion in one direction.”
Those three bars make up the linear slide.
Question: “How does he move?”
Answer: He uses 6 HiGrip Andymark wheels, nothing special.
A (clean) HiGrip wheel
Question: “How does he see? The sandstorm won’t let the drivers see, so what’s going on there?”
Answer: Weegee uses a webcam that will stream the video to the driver station. We will be navigating through the sandstorm based off of that. We have a vision tracking system that allows us to get close to objects and not hit them. It bounces light off of reflective tape and when it gets close, it slows then stops.
The camera and light on the demo bot
A test of the camera on the demo bot.
This blog post in video format.
Blog post, photos, and video by Colin Kovick.