Christmas Update
As we approach the holiday season, progress has been going steadily with our rover so we want to give you an update.
The Grapplerteam has made steady progress with their first evaluation. To get a better understanding of grappler mechanics, we built the open source arm from BCN3D and printed the parts ourselves, directly on campus. The first tests showed some issues with the bearings but we have ideas for improvements in the future and are optimistic we will have a functioning system soon.
The battery management and power delivery is coming along nicely. Fortunately we are able to use old Li-Ion cells from the institute of electric power systems. The battery pack will consist of 6 parallel and 7 serial cells, giving us a nominal voltage of 26 V and a total capacity of 18 Ah, equating to roughly 470 Wh. This energy is needed to power our rovers motors, the grappler, the communication antenna and the CPU as well as several sensors.
