The entire premise of the robot design competition was to essentially design a robot that can throw a tennis ball, lift a weight, run a certain distance, hit a ball, and climb 3 stairs. If that wasn’t hard enough, the size limitation certainly made it harder. The robot had fit inside a 50x50x50 cm box. Once a background has been established, the designing process can begin.
The design process started with building the frame and building the throwing arm. Though the frame wasn’t too difficult to build, the arm was a different story. One of the most important pieces in the arm was the spring that would allow the arm to propel forward and in turn launch the ball. As simple as this sounds, finding a spring that was elastic enough was difficult. Once the arm was built, the next challenge involved positioning the arm on the main frame. The initial position of the arm caused one of the shafts to bend. As a result, we had to slightly adjust the design so that it had more support.
Once the frame was built, the next challenge was getting to get the robot to move. From looking up information on connecting Xbox controllers to Arudino to actually writing the code and wiring everything together. Hours were spent on this part as it involved a lot of troubleshooting. From fixing syntax errors and rewriting some parts of the code to rewiring the motors and power sources, the process involved a lot of troubleshooting. Moreover, having the servo motors working was a challenge in and of itself. The last aspect that ended up being a challenge was designing a scissor lift. Nate spent about 12 hours trying to design a mechanism that enabled the robot to lift a rectangular weight. Naturally it didn’t work on the first try, so he had to spend a considerable amount of time trying to glue and screw the parts in.
With all of that being said, as annoying and challenging of a process as this was, the final result was well done. The entire team learned a lot about arduino, wiring, and controls. No matter how much background knowledge we came in with, that reservoir has grown considerably. Even though we didn’t get first, we will always have this experience in the back of our minds for years to come. Although many problems plagued the Henbot, we managed to push through as one of the few teams to even partly climb the stairs and ended up in a tie with Drexel University in the final rankings.
Written by Sahil P.