DartBoi

Our project uses a Sawyer robot to identify a circular dartboard, path plan and move to desired position, and launch a dart with a custom designed dart launcher attached to the Sawyer end effector. This project incorporates many aspects of robotics and controls, including vision-based target identification, first principles-based trajectory calculations, inverse kinematics and path planning with a PID controller, and integrated mechanical design to launch a dart.

Our robot has a variety of applications both directly related to the project, or related to some aspect of the robot's implementation. At its core, our project is about finding targets using computer vision, then moving a high-degree-of-freedom manipulator to "aim" at it in a kinematic sense. This could be applied to pick-and-place robots with more dynamic effectors, adaptable manufacturing using high-DOF CNC machines, moving cameras to track targets, or the rather obvious defense applications. This could greatly streamline manufacturing and warehouse robotics, providing more dynamic versions of the classic manipulator arm models that exist today.

That being said, the defense applications seem the most straightforward and possibly most harmful if used in the wrong way. However, our team believes that in the best case, our robot can keep more soldiers off of the front lines, keeping more lives safe. In the worst case, our robot can be equipped with nonlethal weaponry with the goal of precisely and non-injuriously incapacitating targets with precise shots. We believe this is strictly better than giving lethal, imprecise, weapons to warfighters or officers where error or bias can cost human lives.