MEC101 Robot Design Project
Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University, NY
MEC101 Fall 2024 Robot Design Project website is live!
Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University, NY
This page describes the project objectives, goals, and rules for the Robot Design project.
To design, build, and program a robot, which belongs to one of the categories below.
Walking Robots: Design and build a walking robot (biped, quadruped, or hexapod, or some other design), which walks at a reasonable speed.
The robot does not have to necessarily walk on a flat ground; it could climb walls or stairs. You can take inspiration from nature to see how various creatures walk and then implement them using a single degree-of-freedom (DOF) linkage system (four-bar or higher) or a multi-degrees-of-freedom mechanism.
A single-DOF mechanism requires only one actuator (motor) to drive it. An example of a 1-DOF system is a four-bar linkage where a certain point of the coupler traces a path taken by the foot of a walking insect. A Multi-DOF system is usually driven by many actuators; for a walking robot, it can be enabled by a set of servos controlling the joint motions of legs. Here are a few examples of walking robots from previous years:
https://youtu.be/wXpgpXxZV48?si=IqgHX9FycdTO1GNO (based on single-DOF mechanism)
https://youtu.be/PQSPE3IFtIM?si=41A__z192t0TKj7C (based on single-DOF mechanism)
https://youtu.be/-OwZnSvHt9Y?si=N1tHH5qV7NUKnL_L and https://youtu.be/OMkoXssOw0E?si=px3M1H4SOm6JFpsl ( based on a multi-DOF mechanism)
2. Social Robot
You can design a robot that interacts with human beings, such as a robot that tries to shake your hands, smiles at you, or plays with you. An example: https://youtu.be/BJcdvi84CeE?si=TnH9y6zfXRLhTK0w
3. Autonomous Toy
You can design and build an autonomous toy that would entertain a child or an adult. The choice of motion is your's, but to a child the motion activity of the toy should be amusing. I urge you to go to a toy store (or spend time online at their web sites) and explore some toys that have interesting motions.
Here is an example project titled robot fish
1. The Robot should produce a motion that can be termed as either useful or entertaining. The motion must be visible from a distance of at least 5-10 ft. The robot should have at least some sensing capabilities, such as collision avoidance using ultrasonic sensor, infra-red for motion detection, light detection, camera, color sensing, etc.
2. There must be a switch on board that when pressed will initiate the motion that should last no less than 30 seconds and no more than 60 seconds. Program it so that it comes to a stop at the end of 60 seconds.
3. The device must be completely autonomous, which means that no remote control (wired or wireless) is allowed.
4. The motion produced must be a safe one. It should not harm any bystanders or anything in its vicinity.
5. The device must have an on-board battery that will be used to power the machine. You cannot connect it to an AC power outlet.
6. The structure of the machine must be designed and put together by you, which means that you cannot buy a ready-made chassis or frame. The SnappyXO kit provided to you should be sufficient to put together most of your designs. However, if you can justify in your design that you need a certain part not in the SnappyXO kit, you can submit the design to us and we will laser-cut it for you that is if you can pick it up. However, we need at least two weeks of time before Thanksgiving break to do any custom cutting. You can also 3D print parts if you want to. You can export custom part geometries from MotionGen and also modify them in onShape.
7. You can only buy components that cannot be easily designed and laser-cut, such as motors, any electronic parts, or a 3D Part that cannot be easily laser cut. Glue-guns should be used as a last resort as they will lead to point reduction. You should create your design such that you can assemble the planar pieces in the SnappyXO kit to realize your design. Hacks are strongly discouraged.
8. The robot must be programmed using an Arduino microcontroller (Uno, Mega, nano, or any other ones).
9. The entire robot should fit in a box of size 1’x1’ x1’. If you need to create an environment to demo the robot, such as a maze, you can do that and will not count against the size of the robot. For certain robots, if approved by me, I can make an exception on the size.
See robot demos from the past year.
The goal of this project is to motivate you to think about designing and prototyping programmable, electro-mechanical devices at an early stage of your engineering career. In doing so, you begin to appreciate the importance of learning fundamentals in a fun and exciting design context while also learning to communicate ideas and working in a team.
You can go to http://www.youtube.com and search for MEC101 Stony Brook and you will find hundreds of video demos of the robots that MEC101 students have created in the past. While these robots may not seem relevant to this year's project, I would like you to learn the possibilities of motions, sensor integration, and programming. While watching those videos, you will notice that many teams choose to embellish their projects with external structure and casing, colors, lights, and shapes, which add to the aesthetic appeal of the project. I encourage you to use your artistic side in combination with the function.
A simple wheeled-robot with an uninteresting motion even if equipped with some sensory capabilities is a bad choice for this project. I have already given you a two-wheeled drive robot, so you can’t just slap some sensors on it and call it a project. A few bad examples: a light seeking or avoiding robot, an obstacle avoiding robot either via bumpers or ultrasonic sensors. Unless you are doing major value addition, such as may be adding a claw functionality to grab something or transforming a wheeled robot into a walking one for uneven terrain, the project would be a bad one and will not be approved. On the other hand, adding simple sensing functionality on more complex motions, such as walking is fine.
Anurag Purwar, anurag.purwar@stonybrook.edu