Turf Wars: Robots for Competition
The Competition.
For my entry level mechanical engineering course, I worked on a semester long robotics project with a team of three other students. The provided challenge was to create a robot and mechanism that could transport different size power orbs (5” and 2.25” diameters) around/over a center wall that was 12 inches tall. The competition was designed as a face off with another team to see who could transport more orbs in a set time.
Ideation.
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Fork Lift
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Turbo
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Bulldozer
Ultimately the turbo design was chosen because it has the potential to shoot the power orbs up the ramp as well as driving them there. This should reduce the time it takes to move the orbs and be relatively simplistic. Each design was built out of foam core and simply on CAD before coming to this conclusion. The decision was ultimately made by ranking the solutions against one another on various criteria using a pugh matrix.
The Build.
Above: the final build of the “turbo” mechanism which was designed to spin rapidly to kick power orbs
Ultimately, the turbo mechanism was not strong enough to kick the balls up the ramp. This could have been fixed with more time for the project by redesigning gear ratios. Additionally, a gear in the drive train stripped during the competition which lead to the robot’s untimely defeat. While the robot had a few shortcomings, I learned a lot from this project. It was the first time that I had ever gone through the entirety of the design process, which was good practice for all of the projects I would use it for in the years to come. I learned how to create design criteria that would lead to the desired results. I learned how to use many different pieces of machining equipment. I learned how to design and build the entirety of a drive train. And I learned how to use CAD software: specifically Solidworks. I designed the majority of the robot in Solidworks myself, with the frequent input from other team members and the occasional component built by one of my teammates. I enjoyed working as a member of team and learned a lot about the importance of communication and how to get to a result that all team members are happy with. For additional project information, please see the full design document attached to the bottom of this page.
