Today we travelled to the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Robbinsville, NJ to tour their robotics warehouse and distribution system. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to have any photos or videos inside the building. But while we toured the 1.2 million square foot facility, we saw robots that automatically moved shelving pods in a random sort method. They were being filled by workers using a computer control system to log every item and store its location for future retrieval. The center had miles of conveyor belts that moved the packages from sorters to pickers to boxers to addressing and finally to the loading dock. At the loading dock a robotic arm placed the bins on forklift pallets for loading into tractor trailers. It is truly amazing how efficient the whole system runs considering they use a random sort method run by robotic shelving units.
After lunch today the first grade students came to learn about the robots we have been building. Each team was given an opportunity to demo their robot and answer questions from the students. It was nice to see how excited they became when one of our robots successfully completed a task on the competition field.
The day ended with us fixing issues that arose during the demos today and getting ready for the last day of Robotics and Engineering IL 2026. Tomorrow we get to compete against each other in round robin style to see who has the best bot.
We increased the size of F.R.O.G.’s arms, letting him reach higher, and tightened the gears so the servos don’t struggle to extend fully. Programmed F.R.O.G.’s servos and motors to allow him to be fully controlled with our remote controller. Added a claw on the front to pick up and move rings with (which took a whole lot of angle grinding). F.R.O.G. has also now been decorated to live up to his name, with a license plate on the back. (It says F.R.O.G.) | There was a lot of troubleshooting with the servos and programming the exact angle we needed the claw to be at when we activated it, but we got it done. Everything is functional, and now we just need to practice controlling F.R.O.G. so we’re ready for the competition later this week. We set the Y button to lift the claw, holding the ring in place, and the A button to release the claw, dropping the ring on the peg, or preparing to pick up another. |