Undergrad Projects
Stewart Platform Mechatronics Project
This picture, as well as the next, show the "Stewart Platform" project I worked on for my mechatronics class. This was a single semester project completed by myself and 3 other teammates. The picture to the right shows the CAD model.
This is a marble maze game similar to the old-school wooden game where the user turns knobs on two sides of the wooden box. In our game, the user instead tilts a wireless control, which then remotely tilts the marble maze. The remote-control is seen in the bottom left of the picture to left. The user can then direct a marble through the maze.
Two Arduino Uno’s and one PIC Microcontroller were used. Six high torque, metal-gear servos move the waterjet-cut aluminum platform. Game music is played through two speakers and a timer is shown on an LCD display.
Our team encountered many problems during the build which we eventually solved:
finding the right trigonometric equations to translate a desired maze tilt angle to the needed arm positions of the 6 servos
transferring data from the controller to the maze platform quickly so there is no delay for the user (2.4 GHz wifi transceivers used)
powering the servos with enough current to move and hold the platform (power supply from a Dell PC was used)
servo arms not holding the heavy platform properly (many iterations of 3D printed servo arms)
game music playing too quietly (a small amplifier was figured out)
Trouble when trying to have the remote-control transceiver send two numbers with decimal places to the platform transceiver ( we figured out a strategy to send one digit at a time to the other transceiver which then knows how to translate it into two numbers with decimal place)
Robot Project
For this project, our team of 4 was tasked with creating an Arduino-powered robot. It’s goal was to complete as many laps possible around a circular track, meanwhile a competitor’s robot is traveling the opposite direction.
We built a robot focused on grip and power - using tank tracks and a powerful RC motor to overpower the competitor’s robot. In the end, we had too much grip on the ground, so the gears in our transmission stripped quickly, resulting in a very underwhelming 1/4 lap around the track.