As everything slowly starts coming together, we start catching hiccups in the electronics or physical assembly that we need to iron out.

For instance, we noticed that the servo motor always moved backward upon start-up. Over time, this caused the angle of the launcher to be inaccurate. To solve this, we went back to the code and ensured that the servo was set at its minimum angle each time the game restarts.

We also noticed some hiccups with the way the launcher. In particular, we realised that the launcher did not always launch the ball. After some trial and error, we finally adjusted the distance between the motor wheel and stationary wheel to ‘squeeze’ the ball just right to ensure that it launches each time. We also needed some reiterations to figure out the best percentage infill for our launcher to ensure that the module was not too heavy for the servo motor to handle.

There was also an issue with how we initially wanted to launch the ball. Through some experimentation, we landed on a mechanism that was honestly nothing short of perfection.

All this tweaking and reiteration certainly did not happen as quickly as it took to read this post. In fact, it was the bulk of our work for the 8 weeks during the semester leading up to our final presentation during recess week. However, given that we had to juggle this project with our lectures, tutorials, research attachments and other commitments during the semester, we simply could not progress as quickly as we did during the summer break.

Regardless, we did whatever we could each time we showed up. It was the culmination of these small improvements and efforts over time that really breathed life into the Gorilla.irl that we see today.

After all this, there is only one big task ahead – our final presentation!