2022-Fall - Check It Out

MAE 3 Fall 2022 Contest Live:

YouTube Contest Live Feed!

MAE 3 Fall 2022 Live Contest Bracket:

Contest Bracket

Point Tracking For Teams

Tracking

Check It Out - MAE Smart Lockers Contest

The lockers should arrive in Fall quarter and one unit will be installed outside of the Design Studio. The equipment can be used for course projects, student org activities, or individual use. We are relying on students to treat the equipment carefully and to inform us of any breakage or problems. To the Instructors’ knowledge, this is the first use of such a system for engineering students in the country.

Design Challenge:

In the Check It Out - MAE Smart Lockers Contest, each team is to design, test, analyze, fabricate, and deploy your robot to take parts out of the locker and place it in various locations that they will be used. These locations include the  Dorm Room, the Trolley Track or inside a Trolley, or Geisel library. Read the details of points below and set your priorities for maximum points.

Risk reduction prototype:

Each team must perform a risk reduction by testing a portion of a proposed design (due Week 6). The Risk Reduction Prototype may take 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 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. 

Robot Size and Starting Location Restrictions

• • In the spirit of sustainability, and to support the campus’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025, there will be material and size limitations to your robot. Robots must fit entirely within a 10x10x10in starting box at the start of the competition, but can be located in any position within the team's half of the field so long as no part of the starting box is touching any object on the contest table (including the side walls and any of the structures) when placed over the robot. The robot may extend past this bounding box only after the round of the competition has begun.

Penalties

• • You may not purposefully damage the other teams robot or alter the playing field for your advantage or opponents disadvantage

  • 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

• • Points are based on the type of Object placed and the location the object is placed in. 

    • Points of Object = Object Type Score + Object Location Score

      • Object Type Scores

        • Lego: 5pts

        • Objects with holes: 10 pts (triangle, wrench, gearbox)

        • Block objects: 15 pts (camera, multimeter, iPad)

      • Object Location Scores

        • Dorm: 10 pts 

        • Trolley Track: 20 pts

        • Geisel 1st Level: 20 pts

        • Geisel 2nd Level: 30 pts

        • Inside Trolley: 30 pts

        • Geisel 3rd Level: 40 pts

    • Example Scoring Sheet: 

      • 2 Lego placed in Dorm: Pts = 2*(5+10) = 30 pts

      • 1 Object with Hole placed in Trolley: Pts = 10+30 = 40 pts

      • 1 Block Object placed on Geisel Level 3: Pts = 15+40 = 55 pts

Competition Structure:

The class winner is determined in an online competition in the familiar bracket format. Competition will occur on finals week Tuesday December 6th 8 am 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.

Deliverables Summary

- Risk Reduction Prototype (Week 6)

- 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 12/4 5PM)

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

6. 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).

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

8. All rulings of the judges will be final.

Robot Contest Results from Fall, 2022

Complete Contest Pyramid and Results

To Be Updated

Contest Winners

 - 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place -

Design Innovation Award

 - Undecided - 

Machine Design Award

 - Undecided - 

High Quality Presentation Award

 - Undecided -