Project Results
When construction was finished, a program was run to test the functionality of the system. Six runs were completed.
Most of the runs were successful. First, the system would calibrate itself and find all of the home positions based on the encoder and photo sensor readings. The robotic arm traveled to the correct location and the pill would be sucked out of the pill bubble into the Vacuum Removal Device. This was repeated for three different pills in different locations.
The success of the suction was directly related to the length of time waited between after the pump turned off and the movement of the card away from the VRD. Short wait times sometimes caused the pill to be flung out of the pill card onto the ground. When the time was lengthened, the pills were removed and stored in the VRD holding chamber with constant success.
Overall the system retrieved the pills from the bingo cards successfully when the pump dissipation wait time was set to a proper length.
For more detailed results, see the Testing section of the final report in the Downloads section of the website.
