Process

To be able to have the system fully operational my team had to perform tasks that can be broken down into three main categories

design and Analysis

The design phase involved us going through multiple different designs that could achieve the same task. Since the problem itself was not very constrained, we came up with many designs that achieve the design requirements. To help our search, we constrained the problem further using design metrics that allows us to quantify the difference between the designs. From there, we were able to use a Pugh chart to settle on the final design. The settled design was completely mocked up in SolidWorks. To determine the required gearing ratio with each motor we performed simple dynamic analysis to determine the required power to articulate with a given trajectory.

Manufacturing

We manufactured all components in-house from raw stock material. Among the many machines we used were: manual Mills and Lathes, waterjet, laser cutter, and an FDM printer. We employed the use of both subtractive and additive manufacturing processes to optimize between ease of manufacturing and freedom of design geometry.

Implementation

The assembly of all of the subsystems involved significant problem solving. As this project was early in our undergraduate degrees, we learned just how many aspects need to be considered for a good design. This phase involved us spending three weeks to try and adapt our existing design to salvage a working vehicle. We had to solve issues such set-screws backing out due to vibrations and loss of wheel contact due to improper weight distribution.

End Products

The end result of the entire project yielded the following products:

• The equations of motion of the system along with the identification of all relevant physical parameters

• Simulink model of the entire system

• A lead controller that stabilizes the ball about an operating point

• A labVIEW program that implements the controller and sensing schemes