1. CSU-Pueblo Team: Paul Rael, Shae Anderson, Atilla Turkoz, Yudhi Paudel
Advisors: Huseyin Sarper

2. Overall System Design
The design that was chosen was to do two separate platforms connected by the left and right articulation component. This was modeled after the Caterpillar Wheel Loader. This too has the two separate platforms connected by a hydraulic articulation component. However, the articulation component of this rover will rely on rotating on a central bolt, and turning will rely on a servo.
PROTOTYPE

3. Articulation Component
Solidworks Drawings
Platforms
Articulation Component

4. Sensors
The PARALLAX ultrasonic distance sensor provides precise non-contact distance measurements from about 2 cm to 3 meters. It works by transmitting an ultrasonic –well above human hearing range- burst and providing an output pulse that corresponds to the time required for the burst echo to return to the sensor. By measuring the echo pulse width, the distance to target can easily be calculated.

5. Microcontroller
This team will use the Arduino Uno P-basic stamp. It is user-friendly and all members of the team now have a significant amount of knowledge with it. The critical components will be salvaged from rovers made in Boulder. These two critical components are the Arduino Uno board itself and the now attached motor controller. These components are shown in the two pictures below. Due to the fact that we will require 3 motors in our design, we will need to be creative while designing a solution for control for all three. Whether that solution will be an additional motor controller module or a set-up where the two motors powering each of the four tires are connected in parallel to the first channel and the servo connected to the second channel remains to be seen. The Arduino Uno has sufficient analog and digital inputs for our purposes.

6. Plans and Progress:
Chassis designs have been submitted, waiting for that.
Prototype of chassis has been built out of foam core, may be used for testing.
Some team members have started coding the Arduino UNO
All components have been bought and received, but the servo.
Still need to circuit (waiting until all components are in and chassis to be built)
Motor design has been modified, rover will now run on two motors instead of four (skid steering will have to be used).

7. BIGGEST CONCERNS
There are two big concerns that the team has thus far:
-Time
We had our designs submitted into the shop the first week of December. As of today, it hasn’t even been started by the machine shop head hancho who we submitted the designs to. With this set back, we’re behind on circuitry, in turn behind on programming. We may end up having to use the prototype, if it can support the weight.
-Beacon/Radio Transceiver
Our only concern about this is the programming and it actually working/being compatible with our radio transceiver. We’re hoping to spend a lot of time on this to make it work properly, but we may not have that time…