MET – Mars Exploration Team
Building the best Mars Rover for Pi Wars 2018!
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No More Prototyping
The last few weeks leading to Pi Wars were extremely busy. After a long time spent prototying and experimenting freely, our team now realised there wasn’t much time left and we were rushing to finish building a “final” version of the robot, suitable for the competition.
We didn’t have any time to update the blog, so this post is slightly late… More will follow! -
It’s Under Control – More or Less
Better control! Sensors! Arduino! Improved software! Fancy graphics! But still crashing into walls… -
MRV0.3 – Still not Working Properly
The major difference between the MRV0.2 and the MRV0.3 is the wheels and motors. For comparison, the MRV0.2 had the “yellow gear motor”, a Lego wheel, and a very wobbly Lego steering axle (the servo was connected to it with another Lego-compatible gear). -
Introducing the MRV0.2
The new MRV0.2 (the second “quick prototype”) is a huge improvement on the MRV0.1 (“pre-prototype”): it has motors for each wheel and each one can turn itself so the rover can move in (almost) any direction. However, the major disadvantage of the MRV0.2 is that the whole structure for the wheels is very weak, resulting in little mobility and many accidents (see the video).
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This is Harder than Expected (Report from 2017, Part 2)
After the first quick “pre-prototype” build our plan was to build a more robust second prototype and use it for experimenting with the basic mechanisms and control, and gradually improve it. -
First Steps (Report from 2017, Part 1)
We wanted to build a very simple prototype first, without too much planning. The aim was to quickly have something that can move, to get some experience with the basic building blocks and to have a starting point to build on.