Full Sculpture

01. Objectives

02. Design Requirements

03. Final Results

04. Brainstorming Process

05. Building Process

06. Challenges/Solutions

Objectives

During the fourth and last week of the COSMOS Cluster 2 on Engineering Design and Control of Kinetic Sculptures, our team has to integrate the Mini Sculpture concept(s) into a working Full Kinetic Sculpture. Lesson learned during the prototyping of the Mini Sculpture are now applied to ensure the Full Sculpture operates autonomously and is robust to any design or programming errors found during the Mini Sculpture design.

Design Requirements

At least one motion sensor, e.g., ball position, velocity, counting, and/or color.
At least one motor changing the dynamics of a part/component of the mini sculpture, and overall, full sculpture.
The motor needs to be automatically controlled by the measurements from the chosen sensor(s)
At least one HI (Human Interface) component, such as a button or dial, to influence an automatic operation.
Only use one LEGO NXT Mindstorm for motion control for the RobotC code.
Analyze the behavior of motion control through WM2D simulations
Documentation of design, simulation, analysis, and proof of operation in team webpages.

Final Results (Videos, Photos, Conclusion)

Brainstorming Process

After difficulties with our mini sculpture, we decided to restart the brainstorming process, including parts that worked in our mini sculpture to our final sculpture. A couple of our ideas included a pendulum rotating dropping the balls into random passages, two pulley systems creating two parts to the sculpture. It will start in the bottom loop and then go to the top, stuck in an infinite loop until it's overridden by the human interface. The human interface we decided to change from controlling the baskets to making a hatch allowing the marble to go back down to the first cycle.

Building Process

We started by building the bottom starting part. This included a pendulum and a ball falling down either the left or the right track. We started with building the base, in doing so we were able to add the top starting track and the pendulum. After that, we designed intricate tracks on the left and right side. We knew we could make these passages simple, but we wanted to add a sense of uniqueness to our sculpture.

Challenges: One of our biggest challenges occurred with the jumping of the marble in the gaps, in order to fix this we created wider tracks allowing the ball more leverage with the angle in which it drops.

Our next step in building the final sculpture was adjusting our mini sculpture so that it could attach to the bottom part. This would be the infinite loop that we can override with human interface to bring the ball back to the start. We then built the track that would adjust with human interface allowing the ball to cycle through the beginning process once more. We used the smooth sides from the lego NXT parts because we had to attach this to a motor (motor is seen in image however the final hatch is not attached yet).

Challenges: Building between Lego NXT parts and chaos kit parts was difficult due to the very little items that connected, however we used the variety of parts provided to build a hatch. Another challenge was reducing the size because we had to be very careful to not adjust any angles designed in the mini sculpture for the ball jumping into the baskets.

Our next steps were connection, adjustment, fixing errors, and adding on the pulley. We started with connection, that being connecting our upper and lower extremes to create the basis of our final sculpture. This process was extremely tedious and difficult because we had to be careful that nothing fell apart, which we did not achieve. Many things fell apart but we were able to reattach and make the sculpture, overall, more sturdy. We then adjusted the bottom sculptures angles so that the ball still wouldn't fall when jumping down the tracks descending from the pendulum. We then attached the pulley on the left side. This is where the ball will leave the first cycle and approach the infinite loop. Additionally, we built the hatch track and connected it to the motor, achieving our overall goals.

Challenges

Topic: Human interface with controlling the baskets to move back and forth

Challenge: The LEGO NXT kept dying and disconnecting because the friction of the moving basket negatively affected the NXT battery.

Solution: We switched to a human interface with a hatch opening and closing and abandoned the ball catch game all together. This allowed us to switch between using an infinite loop and not.

Topic: The hatch design building

Challenge: When a marble is placed the thing will automatically drop, we needed to design a stable platform that would lock and hold when the marble dropped on it.

Solution: We built a design with gears and tested it with adding more supports on the side of the platform until achieving maximum stability.

Topic: Coding the Hatch

Challenge: If the code for the hatch was combined into the original code for the mini-sculpture, the hatch would only be able to open after specific things happened, and could not be activated at any time due to the nature of the ordered code.

Solution: We instead used a completely separate NXT brick, and wrote the program on a new code, so that the hatch was disconnected from the rest of the motors and sensors, such as the ferris wheel or ball catch.

Topic: The Pulley Building

Challenge: We had difficulty with keeping the pulley functioning, when we attached it, it was very slanted and crooked and when we fixed it, it would still get stuck.

Solution: Our solution was to do trial and error, fix the angles and keep it straight, and turn the 5 way connectors around so that the blunt side is facing the pulley so nothing would get stuck.

Solution for 02, adding gears and support in two holes attatched to the gear and track.

Solution for 04, turning around the black 5 way connectors so that the blunt side is facing the pulley.

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