Wall-E Themed Mechatronic Robot Competition

Objective

The goal of this project was to design, construct, build, and test an automated robot that competed in a head-to-head competition while completing various tasks. These tasks included moving set distances, shooting ping pong balls long distances, picking up a ping pong ball (dubbed the Moneyball), and dropping ping pong balls into a target area.

Skills, Software, and Applied Knowledge

- SolidWorks

- Morphological Chart

- Ultimaker Cura

- Trotec Engraver

- House of Quality

- Evaluation Matrix

- YouTube

- Technical Reports

- Presentation

- Arduino Coding

My Contribution

Throughout the project, I acted in a managerial role in which I kept track of deadlines, wrote reports, and delegated tasks to the other group members. This included creating a final checklist for the competition and lending a hand to any section of the project that was falling behind schedule.

Process

Function Tree

Due to the scope of tasks, a function tree was constructed to organize and prioritize the various functions.

Rendered Schematic

A comprehensive, labeled assembly of the final design was created to highlight each feature.

Final Presentation

Comments

This project was the first hands-on project I completed at Georgia Tech. I gained experience working in a fabrication lab, working with a team on a semester-long project, and competing with others academically. If I were to improve this process, I would have preferred to have more precise mechatronics. As it was, programming how each component was supposed to work was very difficult because the system did not work consistently due to age. Otherwise, I had a lot of fun trying to optimize how to best compete in the competition and trying out different solutions to the same problem.