HAcK Group 7
Team Free Block-E
Jerry (Shengjie) Zhu, Julia Stoneburner, Phoenix Tsou
Our Physical Design: Arms
In our first design, our arms were almost identical in shape. The active arm was intended to have an additional smaller arm that functions in a clasping mechanism.
All of our prototypes were laser cut with the exception of one. This was due to laser cutting being much faster than 3D printing.
Passive Arm Design
⟹
•The proximal section made longer to fully extend past the wheels.
•The height of the distal section intended to do the actual picking up was decreased.
•The alignment holes were changed because the non-flat shape of the plastic clip that attaches to the Servo was not taken into consideration initially.
First Prototype
Second, Final Prototype .
Crude CAD replica of the plastic Servo clip
proximal
distal
Height decreased
thinner
Proximal end lengthened
Passive Arm Mechanism
The passive arm suited picking up the Tie Fighter.
The intention was to hook underneath the center rod, lift it up, and allow it to slide down the arm into the backpack.
In testing this worked well. Unfortunately, we do not have video footage.
• The proximal section was altered to fully extend past the wheels while not hitting the backpack when the object is lifted up and dropped.
•The height of the distal section intended to do the actual picking up was decreased. It was also made thinner to fit the handles of the Atomic Death Star.
Active Arm Design
⟹
Similar adjustments were made to the active arm.
Proximal end dropped down
This is where the mini servo fits
The Clasping Mechanism
•Mainly: The Atomic Death Star would get caught in the upper corner of the larger arm.
•The servo has to extend back really far to drop the Atomic Death Star into the box due to its curvature. Its curved this much so that the larger arm can be thin enough to slide into a handle of the Atomic Death Star.
•There is a lip on the clasp I added in case both arms didn’t make good contact. This would have hit the bigger arm which I didn’t foresee until later.
The larger arm rotates back about 180°—the maximum angle for the Servo. The Mini Servo does the same.
Mini servo and clip not pictured for clarity
The backpack
Object gets stuck!
Not the best design.
Active Arm Cont’d
The design in the third iteration was changed pretty drastically. While the clasping mechanism was able to pick up the Atomic Death Star by hooking and enclosing on of its ‘handles’, the object would get stuck on the inside corner in the process of being rotated up. We decided to change our approach.
⟹
⟹
First
Second
Third and final prototype
Active Arm Mechanism
Mini Servo rotates the small arm to lift object
Big Servo rotates towards backpack
Block-E aligns and rolls into hook of
Block-E’s Sentience—LCD Screen
Bonus: Cool LCD During Testing
LCD Iterations
The numbers of customized characters were cut down from 13 to 8 while still making pretty similar faces. The smile was made with keyboard characters instead, and the smaller heart eyes were reused instead of the larger ones.
These weren’t needed after all. It seemed to have resolved itself once the Arduino board was reset.
Our First Challenge: ESP32
Trying to Debug the Data Transmission…
Our Design: Data Transmission
/ Work Flow
Serial Connection Code
Our Design: Main Controlling Code (Arduino)
Main Controlling Code Continued
Main Controlling Code Continued
Main Controlling Code Continued
Main Controlling Code: Deficiency
The (Still Simplified) Flow Chart
Our Process: Building & Testing the Car
Testing motors and servos!
Our Process Continued
Putting things together…
Our Process: Preliminary Testing
Block-E with his body taped and eyes waggling :)
Our Process: Almost Everything Done
Maybe We Should Have Tried…
References:
https://www.quinapalus.com/hd44780udg.html
https://maxpromer.github.io/LCD-Character-Creator/
(Website used to make customized LCD figures)
Task Assigns
For reference
Teams are required to submit their design review presentation by Tuesday, July 26th, at 10 AM. Presentations must be 10 minutes or less and given in recorded video format, where all team members present equally on their design process and demonstrate their finished robot’s functionality via photos and videos. Teams are required to use Google Slides for their presentations and embed all photos and videos of the robot within the slides themselves. The guest judges will be evaluating each team’s Robot Functionality and Features score as well as their Presentation score based solely on the content of the team’s video presentation, so ensure that you showcase all of your robot’s functionality within the presentation itself. Engineering communication practices demonstrated in the presentation, such as clear descriptions of the designs and code used, the iterative design process, and future improvements, will also be considered. For detailed information on presentation criteria, refer to the judging rubric.
Presentations will be submitted in three parts:
1) Video File (MP4)
2) YouTube Link (Instructions on how to upload a video to YouTube can be found here)
3) Link to Your Google Slides
all teams will create a design review presentation, a ten-minute video where they explain their design process from start to finish, showcase relevant CAD models and code snippets, and demonstrate their final robot’s performance.