Junior Design Project

The goal of my junior design project while at UNC Charlotte was to design a remote-controlled robot that could transverse an obstacle course while picking up and depositing a weight. The frame of the robot was made out of an aluminum sheet that was cut with a water jet and bent to shape. Thin aluminum bars were to be used to construct the crane arms and crane cross members. 3D printing was utilized to create the mounting hub for the crane arm, the wheels, and the gripping mechanism. All of the calculations used to verify that the robot would be able to transverse the course and withstand the stresses involved with picking up and depositing the weight were done using MathCAD.

I was responsible for the design of the controls system. The microcontroller used was an Ardunio Uno along with a Playstation 3 controller to allow the driver to control the robot. The robot had to be able to complete at least two runs on the course on the same 4 AA batteries while the microcontroller was powered by a single 12v battery. A total of five servos were used for the project, one at each wheel and one to control the crane arm. The wheel servos were modified to be able to rotate 360 degrees by disabling the rotation of the potentiometers and using time delays to control rotation.

Unfortunately due to the Covid-19 pandemic construction on the robot was not finished.