MAE 106 GROUP PROJECT (2013)
My group's robot for the MAE 106 project. MAE 106 was a very fun class I took spring quarter of junior year. The class is centered around making a battle bot to compete against other students designs. I wanted to go all out on this one because there was a lot of competition within my senior design project.
There were a few parameters, the robot had to be:
Driven by a supplied pneumatic piston
Powered by a supplied tire
Tire pressure can not exceed 40 psi
Robot must fit within perimeter of tire.
Tire must be a certain height from the ground.
We are allowed two encoders, one motor, one potentiometer, and all electronics are supplied to us.
Lots of groups simply had their piston kick at the ground for propulsion, but I decided I wanted to do something that was more of a challenge. I mounted my piston above a bicycle chain strung around two axles so that our robot had 4 wheel drive. Universal joints were used so that we could steer. Fitting everything within the tire diameter was a big challenge and I sized the gearing ratio so that the wheels would not slip from too much torque. This design ended up working and we had the robot moving, there was a bottleneck in the design at the piston-chain engagement though. I was using a door hinge with a cut out tooth to engage the chain on one direction only, a rubber band kept the tooth in a link at all times, it was essentially a linear ratchet. The tooth engaging the chain would bend if we fired the piston at 40 psi, so we needed a pressure regulator, and the ratchet made a lot of resistance for gliding, thus our mobility was limited. Not having a differential wasn't helping either.
Still I came up with some pretty innovative solutions for the steering and construction process, fabrication resources at UCI are very limited and I would not have been able to make this robot if it were not for using Human Powered Airplane's tools. I took care of the design, CAD, and a lot of the building, my teammates handed the Arduino code and electronics. Check out the video, I'm the one who is very excited and wearing a yellow shirt.
Skills Developed:
Arduino
Machine Tools
Vacuum bag molding
Electo-Mechanical assemblies
Solidworks
MATLAB
Team leadership
Communication
Creative design
Design within parameters
Hands on building
There were a few parameters, the robot had to be:
Driven by a supplied pneumatic piston
Powered by a supplied tire
Tire pressure can not exceed 40 psi
Robot must fit within perimeter of tire.
Tire must be a certain height from the ground.
We are allowed two encoders, one motor, one potentiometer, and all electronics are supplied to us.
Lots of groups simply had their piston kick at the ground for propulsion, but I decided I wanted to do something that was more of a challenge. I mounted my piston above a bicycle chain strung around two axles so that our robot had 4 wheel drive. Universal joints were used so that we could steer. Fitting everything within the tire diameter was a big challenge and I sized the gearing ratio so that the wheels would not slip from too much torque. This design ended up working and we had the robot moving, there was a bottleneck in the design at the piston-chain engagement though. I was using a door hinge with a cut out tooth to engage the chain on one direction only, a rubber band kept the tooth in a link at all times, it was essentially a linear ratchet. The tooth engaging the chain would bend if we fired the piston at 40 psi, so we needed a pressure regulator, and the ratchet made a lot of resistance for gliding, thus our mobility was limited. Not having a differential wasn't helping either.
Still I came up with some pretty innovative solutions for the steering and construction process, fabrication resources at UCI are very limited and I would not have been able to make this robot if it were not for using Human Powered Airplane's tools. I took care of the design, CAD, and a lot of the building, my teammates handed the Arduino code and electronics. Check out the video, I'm the one who is very excited and wearing a yellow shirt.
Skills Developed:
Arduino
Machine Tools
Vacuum bag molding
Electo-Mechanical assemblies
Solidworks
MATLAB
Team leadership
Communication
Creative design
Design within parameters
Hands on building
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