September 2018 - May 2019, for MRover. General joint design and primary structure for a 6 degree-of-freedom arm.
Competition objectives at the University Rover Challenge require fine manipulation ability. In response, MRover has traditionally built a 5 or 6 degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) arm to quickly manipulate objects in the field such as supply canisters up to 5kg in mass and instrument panels with a wide variety of features (knobs, switches, keypads, etc.). Due to the tight mass constraints imposed by the competition, the arm must be lightweight -- the team budgets 8.5kg for the arm out of the 50kg for the whole rover.
Ideally, we would like to spend as much mass as possible on the actuators for the arm in order to maximize power output. Previous designs for the arm have involved heavier than necessary primary structures.
Over the course of September to December 2018, I designed a primary structure for the robotic arm to use carbon fiber to cut down mass usage. Additionally, I created a generalized joint design for the arm with lower friction and higher rigidity than before.
Successes:
Failures:
Future Work: