Challenge:
Team of 5: design and build an RC robot that can play 2v2 tennis-ball-soccer.
Skills:
SolidWorks Motion Analysis, Gearbox Design, Laser Cutting
Individual Contribution:
Lead design of ball distribution mechanism and chain gearbox.
For Engs 76: Machine Engineering, we were tasked with designing and building an RC robot that can play soccer. The kicker was that we were not allowed to build a robot that rolled. Therefore, a huge challenge was coming up with a walking mechanism to move the bot in addition to figuring out how to handle ball control.
the soccer-playing scuttle bot in action
We worked together as a team to brainstorm various mechanisms for movement and for ball handling, detailed below.
With these ideas, we combined them into various design concepts.
After brainstorming individually and as a group, we came to our first design review with what we called the Tyco Water Kicker, which incorporated many of our different ideas into one concept.
We built a Jansen linkage out of plywood and realized that it would be too complex and unstable if we were to use it in our bot. We switched to a walking mechanism based on a battle-bot and adapted it to our project.
After prototyping with foamcore, it became clear that an undercarriage design would be extremely difficult to fit into our bot given the limited dimensions. We switched to a sweeper system that both collects and shoots the ball. I personally built and tested all of our sweeper iterations and the sweeper gearbox.
