Mr. Micael Edwards was a special guest at Trial and Error Robotics’ meeting on October 6, 2018. The meeting was held at Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg MS. Mr. Edward is a mechanical engineer and a PhD student with the Army Corps of Engineers’ Geo-technical and Structures Laboratory at the Engineering Research and Development Center.  He came to talk about gear ratios and to show us how to calculate the amount of torque we need to lift the weight of the robot off the ground.  He also talked about how to get the torque output of the various gearboxes and gear combinations by balancing the power and the speed of the gear.

This is where Mr. Edwards is showing us how to figure out the math for the gear ratios of the gear box.

Jacob is showing, Mr. Edward the prototype of the left mechanism that he has built, and how it works.

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Here is a picture of the lifting mechanism prototype.