MA4012 Ball_Fondlers

This repos is for the MA4012 Mechatronics Engineering Design Project. The task is to build a robot that collects the most tennis balls within an arena. The robot must run autonomously to carrying out its task. The robot is built on a VEX Cortex and ROBOTC platform. Key concepts that were kept in mind is good design philosophy on all fronts; mechanical, electrical, electronic, and software.

Navigation

roboC_ws | unitTests | meetingMinutesAndAgenda | sampleCode | dataSheets

Contents

roboC_ws

• main workspace for the final code of the robot.
• all code is written in a functional manner.

main.c

• file to be opened to upload compile and upload code to robot.
• performs tasks in discrete time.

config.h

• file that contains all tunable parameters
• contains all constants

unitTests

• organised into folder with <folder_name> with the function or feature to be tested.
  • <folder_name>.c
  • the main code to be compiled and uploaded
  • <folder_name>.h
  • constants and tunable parameters
  • <file_name>.c
  • the supporting function to carry out tests or to provide functionality to the robot.

motor_control

• tests the motors motion
• tune the closed loop and open loop control of servo and drive motors

localisation

• tests the odometry functionality of the robot
• tune the filter gains for the alpha-beta filters

sensors

• tests the sensor readings of all sensors
• tune the cutoff frequencies of filters
• tune the threshold values of sensors

meetingMinutesAndAgenda

• contains markdown folder of meetings

sampleCode

• contains past year code

About VEX

• ROBOTC doesnt play nice with structs 'invalid return type' link
• ROBOTC doesnt recognise the difference between source and header files.
• global variables within a file only exists within that file's scope.
• global variables within a file's scope are static i.e. they retain their value.
• pragma must be in the file that is selected to be compiled i.e. main.c.

GitHub Cheatsheet

Setup

1. Install Github
2. Download the repository git clone https://github.com/bentjh01/MA4012_Ball_Fondlers.git
3. Create your own branch git checkout -b my_branch
4. Update the repository with new branch git push --set-upstream origin my_branch
5. switch to your branch git checkout my_branch

Saving and Uploading to github

1. Update local repository git pull
2. Checking branch and changes git status
3. Stage changes git add directory_of_changed_file
4. Commit changes git commit -m "some description under 5 words"
5. Upload to the cloud git push

Making Pull Requests

1. Update branch with main branch. git merge main
2. Resolve conflicts if any.
3. Make a pull request on the github page.

Timeline

• Week 3 - Collector Design and Strategy
• Week 4 - Vehicle Design and Drive System
• Week 6 - Power supply and sensor strategy
• Week 7 - Software strategy for power, sensing, and navigation.
• Recess -
• Week 8 - independant/unit test ()
• week 9 - a moving thing
• Week 10 - Prototype ready, additonal strategies
• Week 11 - Testing, tuning and optimization
• Week 12 - Trial run

Members

• Benjamin Teh
• Bryan Galenius
• Eunice Ong
• Fan Zifu
• Kelvin Lee
• Chen Lee
• Timothy Liu
• Hong Wei Tan
• Wilsen Lotan
• Wilson