Full-stack robotics

This year we will be designing robots from the ground up, using CAD (cad-with-onshape) to design 3d-printed mechanical components, arduino or ESP32 programming for behavior, and various sensor modules for sensing.

Scheduled classes

Projects

Basic Differential Chassis (Complete)

Design a basic differential-steering robot chassis. It must have mounting points for motors, battery pack, and control circuitry including an Arduino UNO or Nano.

• This is a cool RC car project that we might tackle in a year or two: AWD 2-speed RC car #remind/yearly

Line follower (In-progress)

Progress tracked on the Project Kanban

Goals:

• Use optical sensors to detect the position of a line
  • How to use the IR sensor board
• Generate corrective steering signals
• drive robot to follow path
  • If path is composed of line segments and tangent circular arcs
  • If path is 90-degree corners connected with straight segments
  • If path is unconstrained, including turns sharper than 90 degrees
• Fastest bot wins

Teaching:

• Working with optical sensors
  • Hardware interface Hi/Lo pin, potentiometer for tuning
  • Arduino code
  • Turn radius of the line, thickness of the line, and designing the array of light sensors
  • Movement with differential steering

Robot vacuum demo (Future)

Goals:

• Use bot sensors and estimation to build a map of a place
• Explore the space in a controlled way
• Score for contest: coverage percent divided by time
• (potential) make a bot that can be powered by a drill battery (3d print the connection).

Robotic arm (Future)

We will build a robotic arm, using something like one of the following as a project guide:

• BCN3D Moveo github page
• modular arm with go-pro standardized connections
• HtM SCARA arm
• HtM Arduino Arm with smartphone control
• OS-Arm
• The disney rolling-diaphragm-piston-robot might be a fun thing to try also.
• Bowden-tube cable guide motion system
• Annin Robotics AR4 Mk3 is a 0.2mm repeatability 6-axis open source industrial arm. Has kits that would put it at about $2k to build
• Arctos arm is an open 3D-printable arm, not accurate enough for real cnc work but pretty cool

Build a Rolling diaphragm actuator