2020-Fall - MAE Crossing

CONTEST LIVE FEED CLICK HERE!!!

Live Bracket

You and your friends (the islanders) have worked hard to plant fruit trees on your island. So have the other islanders!

Breaking NEWS: all registered islands (MAE 3 teams) will participate in the Fruit Harvesting Competition from 8 am to 11 am on December 17th, 2020! 

Design Challenge:

Teams will use Fusion 360 to  design  fruit harvesting robots to gather fruit pieces from trees at varying heights and gripping difficulties. Each team will plant trees on their islands in one of two configurations that will help to determine a team's competition requirements. Students will design their robots to relocate fruit pieces from the branches of the trees to the harvesting basket to gain points representative of the difficulty of retrieving that type of fruit. Students will utilize the unique but limited MAE3 hardware kits and their creativity to fabricate an original robot that will score some or all of the points on the field. Competition constraints and scoring may be found down below.

Risk reduction prototype:

Each team must perform a risk reduction by testing a portion of a proposed design (due Week 8). The Risk Reduction Prototype may make use of materials that aren't contest-legal, but the majority of the materials used must be from the contest-legal kit. The Risk Reduction Prototype should be designed to test an important uncertainty in the concept development stage of your full-scale design. Motivated by this, it should at least contain a mechanism that shows conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy. It is not expected to be a “full” prototype, but if the risk reduction prototype tests more of your concept, then the following weeks will likely be easier. Details on the deliverables from the Risk Reduction are available in Assignment 7. Although every individual can make a RISK REDUCTION prototype, only 1 (for the team) is required. That is, the RISK REDUCTION is a team exercise.

Competition prototype:

Each individual must produce a Final Prototype (due Week 10) based on their harvesting robot design. The prototypes will be looked over during lab section, and by this time the robot should be capable of scoring minimum 1 point from , and beating the TA/Tutor built golem from week 9. Each prototype from a team will be identical, all of the same design, however each individual from a team will be responsible for having their own working robot prototype.

Head to Head Competition:

In the competition, teams will use one of their team's robots (a robot may be switched out for another robot of the same team) to compete in a head to head match to see who will score more points. The winning team will advance into the bracket and will be one step closer to achieving the MAE 3 credit.

This is a one round competition. The rules are as follows:

Game play and scoring:

Each match will consist of 2 teams competing 60 seconds each to score as many points as possible. 

The Starting Box and Position

• • Your robot must start fully on the center panel of your island

  • Your robot must start in a 5” X 5” X 8” box

  • Your robot may not start the match touching any trees, fruit, or the harvesting basket

  • Fruit points will be counted only at the end of the round and will be a summation of the final position of all fruit fully sitting on the ground of the island(fruit cannot be half on the island, half off the island), and any fruit fully in the harvesting basket (See scoring)

  • Your robot may be attached to the playing field

Penalties

• • Your robot may touch the trees at any time during the live competition (other than at the start), but should your tree be displaced from its cross slot at the end of the competition, you will be charged an environmental fee per tree (see scoring)

    • A displaced tree shall be defined as a tree that is not fully inside and fully slotted into its initial cross slot

  • You may not purposefully move or touch any part of your robot or the contest field during the 60 second match. If you do so you will be disqualified from the competition. 

Scoring

• • All point values will be totalled at the end of the competition

  • Fruit fully in the harvesting bucket will be defined as being anywhere in the space above the bucket, and also touching the bucket, or touching a fruit in the bucket. 

    • It is permissible to have the final state of your robot such that it is in contact with a fruit that is fully in the harvesting basket. If this happens, fruit will still be counted if and only if it still meets the previous requirements for being fully in the harvesting basket.

  • Summary of point values 

    • Any fruit on the island floor or in contact with your robot and off its original platform/branch = 10 points per fruit

    • A strawberry in the harvesting basket = 20 points

    • An apple in the harvesting basket = 40 points

    • A pear in the harvesting basket = 60 points

    • Environmental Fee (Falling of a tree) = -30 points

  • Bonus points: 

    • 100% of the team has working robots by Week 10 = + 10 points in round 1 of the MAE Crossing Competition

Competition Structure:

The class winner is determined in an online competition in the familiar bracket format. Competition will occur on finals week Thursday Dec. 17 8am to 11am.

Tie Breakers:

In the case of a tie, rounds will be added to the match if time allows. If there is not enough time, ties will be decided by the judges.

Materials/Fabrication:

• • 3 types of fruits (strawberry, apple, pear) 

    • 1 hanging pear

    • 2 apples (Resting on a 5” high tree platform)

    • 3 strawberries (Resting on a 3” high tree platform)

    • Fruit sitting on platforms must ALL be oriented such that the hole of the fruit is either aligned such that it points directly to the tree or at a 90 deg angle. All fruit must be oriented in the same fashion, you may only choose one of the two options to apply to ALL of your fruit.

• 3 trees

  • • Each tree has 2 platforms at 3” and 5” and a hanging branch at 8” 

    • Trees closest to the harvesting bucket will have 1 strawberry on the 3” platform and 1 apple on the 5” platform

    • The tree furthest from the harvesting bucket will have 1 apple on the 5” platform, and 1 pear hanging from the 8” branch.

    • Trees shall be oriented such that the 8” branch is pointing towards the center of the field(for the radial position) and towards the opposite side of the island(for linear configurations)

• • Playing Field

    • The island shall be composed of cardboard from the MAE 3 hardware shipping box

    • Trees will fit into slots cut into the island

      • Slot positioning will be designated by the playing board fabrication tutorial

    • Playing field configurations shown in figure 2

  • Harvesting Bucket

    • The harvesting bucket will be the hot glue gun box from the MAE 3 harvesting kit, with the top of the box cut off

Deliverables Summary

- Risk Reduction Prototype (Week 8)

- Final Prototype (Week 10)

- CAD for Design (Week 10)

- Team Webpage (Week 10, details posted on Canvas)

- Presentation of Design (Week 10, details posted on Canvas, slides about presentation in "Files" at bottom of page)

- Final Robot Report (Due 12/13 Midnight)

Robot Final Report Guidance

Each student will write a report on their team's work for the Design Competition. The report should be double spaced, in a professional font, and generally look well made. 

Grading Guidelines: The individual analysis will be graded on clarity of text and graphical content as well as correctness of analysis. The analysis section will consider the complexity of the analysis. If a relatively simple part of a machine is being analyzed, then a high grade will require more in-depth analysis, such as: consideration of friction and the motor torque-speed curve. The instructor(s) will be looking for a critical assessment of machine performance and a meaningful explanation of experimental results and how they may vary from theoretical expectation.

This report [400 pts] will include:

• 1. Description of Component (2 page max): In this section, you will introduce your entire robot's design, what it does, and introduce the component you intend to analyze. It should be clear to a naive reader how your robot works. Assume the reader knows the competition, but has never seen your particular design. [25%].

This explanation should involve:

• • 1. 3D CAD of complete machine with annotations. It should be clear how overall machine works

    2. 3D CAD of components with annotations. You should show how details of components work. Include a clear description of the role the analyzed component plays in the larger machine. Include multiple views if it helps.

    3. Photo of your robot

    4. Minimum Set of Functional Requirements of your component

       1. What the component needs to accomplish (not how it was accomplished)

       2. List each FR as a one sentence bullet. Indicate quantitative values where appropriate

       3. Example: "Robot must reach the middle of the table in 10 seconds."

    5. Overview of how well the component functioned. Give numerical values (e.g. speed, points, maximum mass lifted, etc...)

• 1. Analysis of Component: Present an analysis on your component. Note that there can not be overlap between team members on the analysis, unless explicitly allowed by the professors. Each team member must analyze something different. If the design cannot be split into enough "components", the MAE3 instructors will work with the team to find an acceptable division. [60%]. 

This analysis should include:

• • 1. A problem statement -- what are we going to learn about your machine? The goal must be a maximum or minimum of some kind (for example, “maximum exit velocity of football”, “minimum force required to release the trigger”, etc)

    2. Assumptions -- these must be appropriate for the analysis.

    3. The relevant Free Body Diagram(s). Follow the rules for good FBD’s (include coordinate axes, no internal forces, etc)

    4. The actual analysis -- perform the analysis that is most relevant for assessing the performance of your component. This will take the form of one of the two options below:

       1. Force/Torque analysis: This solution must start from force/moment balance equations obtained from the FBD’s. Using those equations, the work will proceed as needed to answer the problem statement to calculate the maximum performance.

       2. Speed analysis: Calculate the maximum theoretical speed of your component. 

Note: For either of the above, you must show a solution which ultimately answers the problem statement. 

• • 1. Perform experiment to measure the actual value computed in part d.

    2. Calculate the realized Factor of Safety of their component (for either force/torque or speed, depending on what you selected above) and interpret the value.

    3. Overall conclusions: make general conclusions about your component and the robot as a whole. 

       1. Briefly summarize the results of your analysis

       2. Compare the results of your analysis and experiments and explain any discrepancies

       3. Discuss limitations of the chosen design

       4. Discuss any design changes that you would make if given a second chance and other overall design directions you would have taken if you were to repeat the competition

       5. Reflect on the biggest technical lesson you gained from the project

       6. Conclude general and thoughts ideas for the robot

• 1. Design Process Essay (1 page max): Select ONLY ONE area of project management listed below, and explain how this approach was used by you in the design process. This essay is not related to your analysis. Describe what aspects of this design process worked well or didn't work well, and what would you change in future design projects. [15%] 

     1. Concept generation and creativity methods: Give an example where you had a conceptual block, conceptual breakthrough, or where you used a solution neutral environment. See lecture on Creativity.

     2. Risk reduction tests: Describe a case where you built a simple proof-of-concept mechanism in order to decide whether to proceed with that approach. The results of the test could have led you to pursue or abandon your approach. 

     3. Prioritization and scheduling: Explain why you prioritized certain tasks and how this impacted your overall design process. For example, did you follow your Gantt chart, and did the chart help the design process?

Expanded Rules List

1. The course instructors reserve the right to make changes to the contest rules if deemed necessary, but we will try to avoid this if possible.

2. Judges and/or instructors will disqualify any device that appears to be a safety hazard.

3. A maximum set-up time of 2 minutes will be allowed for each round

4. Operators may not interact with their machine during a round.

5. Playing Field trees, islands, and fruit must be made per the fabrication tutorials linked here

6. It is allowable to adjust the configuration of the machine between matches; for example, to switch out damaged parts.

7. Parts built for the Risk Reduction prototype can be used in the final contest prototype only if those parts would normally be legal for the final contest (ie, if you used non-contest materials in your risk reduction, you can’t use your risk reduction parts in your contest prototype).

8. Machine advertisements and decorations must be of the nature that it does not offend any other students or audience participants (use common sense!).

9. All rulings of the judges will be final.

Robot Contest Results from Fall, 2020

Complete Contest Pyramid and Results

To Be Updated

Contest Winners

 - Undecided - 

Most Creative Use of Kit Components/Most Resourceful

 - Undecided - 

Most Unique Design Feature

 - Undecided - 

High Quality Presentation Award

 - Undecided -

High Quality Animation Awards

 - Undecided - 

Most Custom Designed and Fabricated Parts

 - Undecided - 

Most Festive Island

 - Undecided - 

Most Festive Robot

 - Undecided - 

Most Environmentally Friendly

 - Undecided -