The first flying test is to test the move_to_ball function: The logic of move_to_goal function now is correct and PID is kind of ok so we move forward to the next part. Before, we notice that it was easy to lose the track of the green ball and even after we fine-tune the PID controller. So...

During the previous competition, one of the problems that we noticed was that our blimp was not mobile enough to navigate the windy environment inside MESH in Indiana. Therefore, one of our focuses in the past couple of weeks was to mechanically improve our blimp. This includes replacing the motors...

For Week 10 of Winter 2022, our team worked on the following: A new blimp design which is bigger than before – can hold 330g. A new capturing mechanism that can easily catch and let go of the green ball. A new search or go back to ball/goal algorithm that executes when the ball/goal is lost d...

Weekly WIPs (work in progress) are shorter posts that describe projects or features that are still being worked on, as opposed to fuller posts looking at completed work. Most features take weeks to build, so these are smaller intermediate progress reports, but hopefully will still be interesting! W...

Testing the new blimp using manual control. Since the blimp is not fully filled with helium the motors bend when they are activated, making it less maneuverable. Motor placement also inhibits blimp's maneuverability. Testing the capturing mechanism using a controller. Using the controll...

There are two variations to the designs of the motor handles, one for the vertical motor and the other for horizontal motors. They are designed with the intention of keeping the weight low and sturdy as this is used with a brushless motor. Horizontal Motors: The design has a hole going strai...

This was the first attempt at making an active capturing mechanism for the autonomous blimp. We tried using a claw design where the carbon fiber rods acted as claws while a servo motor along with gears assisted in rotary motion of the claw.

The past couple of the weeks were removing the hacks that were put together for the presentation last month. Some things I have added and plan to add to RoCo, particularly in context of integration with scenic. This includes exporting the RoCo output to a format compatible with webots, in a general...

The blimp can hover when it's close to the goal if we set PID value to be small: The blimp will easily lose track of the goal when it approaches from a further distance because our PID value is small: A screen recording shows how it lost track of the goal: How to improve next: ...

We always like to see when we can remove more lines of code than we add. The refactor mentioned in the blog post two weeks ago is finally done and merged, and in general refactoring is wrapping up. Hopefully new feature development (port arrays, then multipack devices) will start next week. A...