Blade Sensors - olinrobotics/gravl GitHub Wiki

The blade sensors are ultrasonic sensors that sense the amount of dirt accumulated in the box blade. The box blade is 1.54 meters in width and 0.61 meters in length.

The blox blade fills up with dirt during the process of evening out the ground and stalls the tractor

Entire System Schematic

Electric

Protoboard Schematic

Mechanical

Originally, we sought to fabricate the sensor mounts by water-jet-cutting sheet metal and bending it into the shapes shown below. Upon further exploration, however, we decided to discard the sheet metal design and use 80/20 bars instead. An 80/20 frame will come in very handy as it will allow us to slide the sensors along the tractors x and y-axis.

The measurements of the box blade are as follows: Box Blade - 1.54m (W) x 0.61m (L)

We will use 80x20 bars with an edge length of 1.5 inches. The longest 80x20 (1.5 in) bar that we currently have is 2.4m long. As most connectors require drilled holes, we are considering using 90 degree hideen corner connectors. Other 90 degree corner connector options are this one, or that one.

Self-Aligning Roll-in T-Nut with Spring Leaf will be used to mount the 3D-printed sensor casing.