Embedded Files
Requirements
Requirements
The mini sculpture is a project that intends to be a gateway into working with marble tracks and NXT motors. Therefore, it was listed within the project requirements that the sculpture must run completely autonomously. However, there must be at least one human interaction interface, and at least one measurement must be taken which changes the output of a motor.
By using a Pugh chart, we were able to finalize two different motor/sensor designs that would complete these requirements with the least trouble, and the most pizazz.
Design Concepts
Design Concepts
The main components in our mini sculpture that we selected were a ball pusher, and a drop bridge.
We also considered a color sorter, which would take a color reading of every ball that passed by and then would sort them into their respective buckets. Lastly, we brainstormed a windmill that would be constantly running and would bring the balls around a horizontal pole. Both of these concepts, though, were not very feasible as the color sorter was hard to code and the windmill was not realistic to build.
Bridge Drop
The bridge drop was made for our automated machine requirement. It included a light sensor to detect a ball and hinge that could lower a track. Once a ball passed by the sensor it would trigger a nxt motor to lower a part of track so the ball could pass through.
Risk - hinge cannot consistently hold weight/not enough torque to give consistent drop speed
Ball Pusher
Ball Pusher
The ball pusher was our human interaction requirement. For this aspect, we had a light sensor detect a ball and activate a pushing mechanism. This mechanism was made out of lego bricks and an nxt motor. For the human interaction we had a button you could press which would override the light sensor and activate the pusher on its own.
Risk - inaccurate pushing/ball might fall
Analysis
Analysis
A method of analysis we used for both the Ball Pusher and the Drop Bridge was creating Working Model 2D simulations for both of them.
ramp meachanism complete.aviball pusher working model .avi
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