January - May | 2018

Initially, much of my role was in designing, prototyping, and building the mounts that would hold the drink. However, as the semester went on, my role expanded to delegating tasks to other team members as well as preparing the main code that would take in drinks orders and move the cup to preset stations.

Drink Mount:

Using a simple clamping system to hold the drink bottles, I made designs in Fusion 360, prototyped it with a laser cutter, and made a final design out of waterjetted aluminum. Due to recommendations from the machine shop staff, we also had to do some post-production work to drill holes using a Mill to allow for more robust assembly.

Arduino Code:

Later in the semester, as we were finalizing our assembly, I began working on the Arduino code. Initially, the goal was to integrate an Alexis skill to allow for verbal commands. However, due to time constraints as well as fried parts, we had to simplify our project for more simple computer entered commands.

Essentially, using one script, the program would take in a drink request, rotate the stepper motor to move the carriage to its different stops, activate the linear actuator that would push up against drink mounts to pour liquid, activate pumps for mixers, and return the drink to its start position.

While this role was very initially challenging, because I had no experience with coding other than Matlab, this was the most rewarding part of this project. Using basic commands, I was able to program the motor to rotate specified cycles to reach different stages, wait for the linear actuator finish pouring, and eventually return to the starting position.

Showcase:

After 4 months of hard work, our team showed off our project at the Senior Project showcase. Even with some technical difficulties that happened at the last minute, the project was a success as it was able to take in orders and provide a yummy drink.