Robotics 1001 Term Project

WPI's robotics engineering program consisted of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science courses. In addition there are specific robot courses that focus on specific areas of the three disciplines. The freshman year course, RBE 1001, however is an overview of all three disciplines to give students a proper introduction into the program.

Figure 1: Overhead view of the competition field

Competition

At the end of the term, each group (team of three students) is required to design and build a robot for a competition called Savage Soccer. In this game, teams are pitted against each other to collect and score as many points as possible in the time allowed. The first 20 seconds of the match the robot operates completed autonomously and is tasked with collecting foam cubes and placing them in different goals. After the autonomous section the robot switched to RC mode and a team member continues to collect the foam cubes with the help of another team. The team that collects the most cubes in the allotted time period wins.

Design

The robot had to use the arduino kit and some sensors that we were given at the beginning of the class. How we built the base of the robot, drive train, foam collector and sensors was up to the discretion of our team.

Our team decided to design a 3D model of our robot in Solidworks so we can then laser cut the pieces out of balsa wood.

Figure 2: Solidworks model of the base Plate and side panels

After extensively reading the rules we determined the way to score the maximum amount of points is to put all the foam cubes in the plastic bowl and then place the entire bowl full of cubes in the highest goal. By doing this, the cubes get double counted for being in the bowl and for being in the highest goal. In order to pick up the bowl we played with many different designs and after a lot of trial and error we created a simple gripper. An issue we ran into was the bowl would slip so we added rubber bands between the grippers to create tension, thus holding the bowl in place.

Once we had the bowl in the gripper we needed to collect the foam balls and put them into the bowl. I designed and built a conveyor belt that was laser cut and had a servo with four gears to collect the cubes.

When all of the cubes were put into the bowl we needed a way to lift the bowl and place it in the high goal. After a lot of discussion we decided on building a six bar linkage. We initially wanted to build a 4 bar linkage but the problem with that is it doesn't have a high enough span to reach the goal.

Video