Today, Jane and I were able to make our printer somewhat copy what the scanner read from the paper if there were multiple lines. We made the paper have large block text and the printer would break the letters into pieces and print it out. However, the two robots are still not fully synchronized and the scanner will often go faster than the printers. Additionally the scanner will sometimes get stuck and that can delay the movement of the scanning robot.
0 Comments
Today, Jane and I were able to make the printer copy the same line from a grid that the scanner scanned. However, the biggest problem we face is synchronizing the movement of the printer and the scanner. We need to find the right balance between the two so that they move at the same speed. In biophysics, we were able to make the random walk program find a target inside of a boundary and stop when it is found.
Today, we started to code our project in the morning, but we didn't get enough time to make any significant advancements. We were able to make our color sensor see the light and tell if the light was on or off. In the afternoon, we worked on making our light sensor work better at scanning the paper because it wasn't earlier. We also got some pseudo-code for our scanner done today.
Today, we decided to expand our project and add a scanner machine. The scanner machine was built the exact same way as the printer, but it has a color sensor instead of a place to keep a pen. Once we finished the scanner machine, we debated a way to communicate between the robots and settled on using a lightbulb and a color sensor. If the scanner senses a light, then the pen will be put on the paper, and if there is no light, then the pen will be raised. This method was more inefficient than we wanted, but there was no better way for us to do it.
We started building our printer today by following a tutorial. By the end of class, we were actually able to finish building the robot. The printer robot moves the paper with wheels and the pen moves on an x-axis. Therefore, the pen and paper move together in order to write text on the paper. In biophysics, we learned about probability and how to calculate the probability of ruin.
Today, we realized that it would be too difficult to actually create the shirt folding machine because it would always collapse under its weight when the arm was extended. The motors were unable to lift up the weight of another motor. We decided that we would select another project that used the same x-y motion. We eventually settled on making a printer which we will start building tomorrow.
Today, we got almost the whole day to work in Robotics and we made some significant progress on the arm of our robot. However, it still seems unstable and the arm may be too heavy. It seems like the robot can easily tip over and the parts can break apart. We may have to design our robot differently to make it more stable.
Today, we worked on our biophysics lab which was a program to convert a DNA sequence into an amino acid sequence. First, I converted the DNA to RNA by replacing the 'T' with 'U'. Then, I searched for the Methionine ('AUG') codon in order to determine where to start. After that, I divided the rest of the sequence into groups of 3 bases until a stop codon was found. This program didn't pose too much difficulty for me, but it was fun to learn the new syntax for python. In the afternoon, Jane and I worked on the structure of the robotic arm for our shirt folding robot. Currently the structure is unstable and we are unsure about how to make it stronger. Jane and I will talk about the structure in more detail on the coming Monday.
Since, I finished my activities early, I was able to start building the base for my shirt folding robot early. Jane and I decided to use rectangular pieces because they would require less pieces than other methods. Unfortunately, the base was flimsy, but it didn't matter too much because the base will be on a flat surface the whole time. In the afternoon, we learned about how RNA is copied and how proteins are made. We used this information to find out what amino acids would be made from a certain chain of bases. Afterwards, we started working on a program that would tell which amino acids were in a chain of bases.
Today, we presented Chapter 4 "The Letting Go" of the book we were assigned to read. "The Letting Go" explains how releasing your inhibitions allows you to be more creative. This is because it disables the DLPFC in the prefrontal cortex which deals with impulse control. This allows a person to be less cautious and more expressive. In the afternoon, we attended a lecture by a professor from CalTech who talked about his research in solar energy. He explained how solar energy works and how he contributed to the field along with professors and students from around the world. After the lecture, we learned about plots during the python lecture in Biophysics. We were able to work by ourselves and discover how to create plots about population growth.
|
Photo used under Creative Commons from Kevin M. Gill