Robotic Exploration Team takes off!

     With the start of Winter Quarter the Robotic Exploration team has begun to embark on the long journey in making our final product of building a functional robot for the purpose of archaeological exploration. During the first week, we as a team decided about our plan for the rest of the quarter. We came up with the agenda of first having an on-boarding project where we build the same 4 wheel robot that the previous team had built. This will help the team understand all the aspects of the technology that will be required to construct a device that can move and give live feedback video. After this we plan on building off past prototypes to construct a new design of a robot that has better capability of traversing rocky terrain. Our last goal for the quarter is to develop and start building a completely new design that no previous Peru robot team has built. Our brainstorms right now include building a snake-like robot that can crawl through tunnels. 

       Pictured above is inspiration for the snake-robot we are currently brainstorming to build.


     So far we as a team have already started buying parts for the on-boarding project build that we hope to start in the next week. These parts include all the materials needed to build the previous years' robot, which will also be used for future prototypes we build such as the motors, tires, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi. We have also had a partner meeting with John Rick, who is head of the the archaeology program in Chavin De Huantar, Peru. During the meeting we were able to take valuable information such as how we can improve the robot to b=make it more accessible for archaeologists to use on site. We can do so by improving our user interface and limiting the amount of buttons and onboard electronics used with the control system. We also learned of the need for a mapping system on the robot to give more useful information to the exploration of the tunnels. We will continue to work towards these goals and will get back to y'all on our progress soon.

-Robots Team