Mechanical Design
Fan Capture
We mounted a fan on the base of the bot perpendicular to the direction of travel. The fan was directed at a ramp the transported ball to the top of the bot, where they would wait to be sorted by our sorting arm.
Cookie Guy - Ball Color Classification
To sort the GARBAGE into the proper bins, we used a cookie shaped stack of duron(aptly named Cookie Guy) attached to a servo. A color sensor, used to determine whether a ball was recycling or garbage, was mounted under the ramp that guided the balls into the Cookie Guy. Recycling was pushed into the bin on the left and trash was pushed into the bin on the right.
Starboard and Portside Bay Doors
On the front side of the bot, we had two gates, which would hold balls falling down the two ramps. The top ramp held trash and the bottom held recycling. Both GARBAGE depositing mechanisms were controlled by servos. The top servo had an arm that would lift up when the trash was being deposited. The bottom servo controlled the angle of the ramp. When it was time to dump the recycling, the bottom servo would lower the recycling ramp until the balls could pass under the bumper.
Iterations of the Model
Our group went through several iteration on the design of our robot. The changes we made were mostly influenced through prototyping and testing ball collection and ball sorting mechanisms. These were the most crucial aspects of our robots functionality, so we designed the remaining components around these mechanisms.
Limit Switch Bumper
We used a limit switch bumper mechanism for our collision avoidance and for finding the trash and recycling bins. The IR sensor would orient our bot in the direction of a bin and the limit switches would indicate when the bot had run into the bin.
