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Overall Design
Overall Design
Our mechanical design focused on simplifying the robot as much as possible, with a few key objectives. First and foremost, we needed wheel cutouts inside the perimeter of the chassis to allow for limit switches at the front center and corners of the bot. Our bot was driven by two wheels at the front of the bot, with one ball bearing at the rear. Also, the back of the bot was rounded to help with turning next to walls so the robot could slip alongside the walls without getting stuck.
Chassis Design
Chassis Design
1st Chassis
1st Chassis
"Billy"
2nd Chassis
2nd Chassis
"William"
3rd Chassis
3rd Chassis
"Sir William"
The first chassis design was a simple and rudimentary base plate made from chipboard for the initial assembly of our components, both mechanical and electronic. The second chassis was a more refined acrylic design that accounted for new motor mountings, as well as a second tier for the ball drop ramp and extra space for the IR beacon. The final chassis carried over a lot of these same features and made modifications for better breadboard and wire spacing, switched to hardware connections for easier assembly/disassembly, and incorporated line sensors.
Front
Left
Right
Back
Ball Drop Design
Ball Drop Design
Since the ball drop has to work regardless of which side of the arena the robot is in, we designed an adjustable slide that can be physically turned to face the correct orientation. The slide interacts with the second layer of the chassis using two tabs that slot into place. We decided on simply flipping the slide to reduce the number of moving components that may break.
The ball drop was sized in such a way that it could easily hold 5 of the "darts" at a time, while also providing enough of an incline for the "darts" to quickly exit the slide. The drop was also designed to hang off the edge of the second tier so that the edge of the slide hung off the edge of the robot, clearing both the first layer and the frame of the course.
The ball drop was controlled by a swinging fence gate attached to a servo motor. When the robot reached its final position on the course, the servo would rotate by 180 degrees and free the "darts" to roll down the ball drop.
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