Every year the American Society of Mechanical Engineers releases a problem statement for their Student Design Competition. The task for 2017 was to build a single robot to compete in a Robot Pentathlon. The Robot Pentathlon was composed of fives events: The Sprint, The Lift, The Throw, The Climb, and The Hit. The specific requirements for each event can be seen in the link on the bottom of this page. The ASME student chapter at California State University, Northridge competed at the ASME E-FEST West Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was the Project Manager for the CSUN student chapter's team. With 30 members I structured the team into five sub-teams that each focused on an event. Our group went through various steps in the engineering design cycle such as Preliminary and Critical Design Review presentations. This was to be confident in our design and to build skills that are necessary for working in the engineering industry. During the design process, our group was advised by a professor on campus, and we were also given advise during our CDR presentation by representatives of our sponsor, AeroVironment. To bring this project to life our group made a full scale CAD model of the robot, ran analysis, utilized various motors, coded with Arduino, designed a custom app that was used as a controller, and manufactured nearly all of the components by machining and 3D printing. The following paragraph will explain the different subsystems of the robot.

The Sprint and The Climb design that was incorporated to the robot featured VEX robotics tank treads accompanied by a linear actuator to help push the robot up and climb the step.
The Lift design was modeled after the commonly used construction machine, a scissor lift. Our scissor lift was manufactured mostly out of aluminum channels and was driven by a linear actuator. This assembly could raise up to 31 inches with a 20 lb mass.
The Throw design used a rack and pinion driven by a linear actuator to reel in a cable that compressed a high stiffness spring. The tennis ball was loaded onto the spring and the spring would be released to launch the ball.
The Hit design featured a 3D printed paddle that was driven by a DC motor in order to hit a golf ball that was at rest on the ground.

I would like to say a special thanks to our adviser Dr. Schaal, our sponsor Aerovironment, and for CSUN VEX robotics for providing knowledge and resources to help make this project a success!
ASME SDC Competition Rules Link:
https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/ResourceFiles/Events/Competitions/Competition-Rules-Final.pdf