ELISABETH GAGNON
In a team of four, we were tasked with building a robot that could autonomously move through a maze when placed in a random position. It then needed to locate a block and bring it to the designated drop off location. My responsibilities included designing the drive train, creating code, and electrical troubleshooting.
The robot consists of three wheels: the two front wheels rotate through stepper motors and control the direction of movement, while the castor wheel was mounted at the back for stability. The gripper was designed to be a scooping mechanism that closed around the block, using a stepper motor.
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A total of 7 ultrasonic sensors were used. Sensors 1 and 7 were used in block detection, while all other sensors were used to navigate along the walls. I developed algorithms via MATLAB that both detects and aligns the robot to the block, as well as to align the robot to the wall to ensure for precise positioning.
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The final robot used a combination of off the shelf components and 3D printed parts using PLA. A total of two arduinos were used, one which controlled the motors and one that read the sensor measurements; they communicated to via serial communication. Additionally, bluetooth communication was used to communicate to the MATLAB algorithms.