April 26, 2015
Our main goal today was to test walking. It was semi-successful. The first few attempts didn’t work very well, and it was difficult to determine exactly what the problem was, so we started paring down what we were testing. A number of things were identified as contributing factors: the back pack straps were mounted too high on the frame, the sensor mounts for the legs weren’t positioned properly, and the feet tended to tilt forward and get caught on the driveway. We decided to first focus on the sensor mounts, so we diconnected the feet and started to test each leg separately. We eventually got the right leg working pretty well, so that gave us some hope that the whole design is workable.
At the end of the day the left leg wasn’t working well, so we suspected it was because the sensors needed to be repositioned and the back pack straps were too high. During the week Joseph and Tony tweaked the sensors mounts and repositioned the back pack. Things are working much, much better now. We’ll try a full system walking test this coming weekend.
While the walking tests were going, Ed and Connor reinforced the 3D printed joystick mounts
and Sammy and Thelonious worked on the roll cage that is designed to project the head and shoulders of the wearer should a fall occur.
Cole and Thelonious also mounted the laptop stand on the frame, shown here on the right:
