Project Review

Reviewing the project as a completed whole, there are various tasks i believe we did well and many we could improve on.

Overall i see the project as a success, we completed the final assessment with good marks. I believe the biggest issue would have to be our time planning, in retrospect, i would have liked to have had more time building and testing. Although even when saying i believe i had more time, there was a three week period in the middle of this project where various group members, including myself, were needed elsewehere for the holidays. With this mind, although it's regretful that the three weeks were minimal work wise, i believe we did very well to complete the tasks ahead of us and create a buggy that worked and looked good.

Something i think we did well was the finance side of the buggy, we did not pay for one component, all parts were sourced second hand from garages and the tip over the three weeks holiday.

I personally believe i could have improved on my role as Assistant Project Manager (Build Team) by officially recording the group happenings more effectively. Throughout this project i have kept my group discussions and progress recorded in note form, this includes all my random ideas and personal drawings/layouts. If i had officially written these random notes and 'sketches' up, i maybe could have kept them more organised and possibly shared them more effectively with the group.

I would like to believe that i have learned much from this project but the main things would have to be how to keep the myself organised and motivated.
Posted by Sophie Latham

Final Assesment

This photo shows the buggy fully assembled during the final assesment of this project.
Posted by Sophie Latham

Buggy Testing

This video is demonstrating the initial testing of the buggy whilst line following.



The above video shows the buggy being tested at the symbol following capabillity.
Posted by Sophie Latham

Final Build

The components were collected and we began assembly.







Whilst the assembly was being completed (as shown above), i finished the robot top-plate using electrical tape and a coloured disk taking from an old disco ball. This is also shown above.



The above is the finished buggy assembly.
Posted by sophie Latham

Templates ('Robot-Robot' Idea)

After materials are gathered and the buggy design was near finish, me, Dali and Mark discussed what shape to cut the acrylic top plate into. We discussed ideas and i suggested a robot profile with stick-on features, it is a simple idea and be easily designed and cut into acrylic without taking too much time or effort. This allows us to spend more time on the build and assembly of the actual buggy frame.



The above is a picture of the paper templates i made that will allows us to cut out the overall shape of both the bottom and top acrylic plates.



We cut out the overall shape as shown above.



The above is a drawing i have done to show me hole placements, including the stripboard offset.



This is picture of the acrylic sheets with the holes marked out. They are to be completed by Anand, who will take them home and drill all the holes indicated.
Posted by Sophie Latham

Initial Design

Below is a drawing of my intial idea and an included parts list. The sketch does not include the circuits or battery pack, just the motors and frame positioning.



Posted by Sophie Latham

Back-Up Wheel Ideas

The main requirement needed of the third wheel is the need for it to move in multiple directions when the buggy turns (Ref Meeting 4). It needs to move easily with minimum drag on the motors moving the buggy. The biggest problem involved with this situation is the small size with which the wheel will be placed. Me, Mark and Anand got together and came up with three ideas.
We decided to go ahead with the idea involving a castor wheel that pivots 360 degrees and can be bolted to the buggy frame. Whilst conducting a search for a suitable wheel we found there to be a very restricted market for small castor wheels. To counter this problem we kept the 2 other original ideas as back-up, they are shown on the below sketch.



Posted by sophie Latham

Meeting 4 (18/03/2010)

Progress made on programme and requires testing. An initial prototype will need to be built during the lab of the 23rd March, where the programme can be tested and the sensor placement can be arranged.
Buggy build design discussed -

• Wheel set-up needs further research. We have two wheels to connect to the motors but are missing a third to balance the buggy. We have decided to use a wheel on a pivot but this will depend on availability. Alternatives have been discussed in case a pivot wheel can not be sourced.
• We have sourced some acrylic that could be used for the buggy chassis.
• Sandra has sourced some electronic components for soldering to a stripboard circuit on the final build.

Stripboard will need to be sourced.

Robots

Robot types

This is a SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm) robot and is the most common industrial robot used, it is manufactured by America’s biggest robotics manufacturer, Adept. It is has three joints which allow for three axial planes of movement. It’s best used for a ‘Pick-up and place’ function, where you are simply moving something from location A to location B

REF (Photo and information sourced from) - http://www.learnaboutrobots.com/industrial.htm

This particular robot is called a Fanuc robot, is has six pivot joints and thus six degrees of freedom. It can move in the x, y and z whilst also using the remaining three to orientate the object it has picked up. These three axis are called roll, pitch and yaw. The most common utilisation of these robots is to exploit their freedom of movement by doing such work as painting or welding; hazardous processes that need a human range of movement but without the worry about risking a human employee.

Ref (Photo and information sourced from)- http://www.learnaboutrobots.com/industrial.htm

Advantages of robotics
· You can use robotics where you wouldn’t want to place a human, such as in welding processes or painting.
· Robots can work hours on end with no break or stop, this increases productivity.
· Robots can be faster than humans and make less errors as they don’t lose their concentration.

Disadvantages of robotics
· If an error occurs, such as the paint being applied is the wrong colour for example, the robot will not know and so will carry on as it is. Unless a safety switch is pressed, or a specific sensor is set and used to prevent and warn the robot, it will not stop it’s workings until a human notices and stops the production line.
· Robots need regular calibration, maintenance and repair. This can only be done by a trained human specialist and can be expensive.
· Robots in themselves are expensive to purchase in the first place.
· When being set up with a new process they need to be set by a trained specialist. This involves writing the programme and setting up all the axial offsets, this takes time and again the expense of a specialist.
· Quality Engineering will need to focus on batch testing the output from the robots to ensure that the offsets haven’t moved and all work output is up to specification.

Automatic functioning of a robot - The safety aspect
Having fully automatic robots can be very advantageous but it also has its drawbacks. The robot will work for long lengths of time without needing to be checked but when robots go wrong, they can sometimes become dangerous.

For safety reasons robots are generally setup with dozens of sensors to alert the user and the robot that is has either moved out of its range or done something, it shouldn’t have. If the robot has just been programmed or a robot component fails, there is a high risk it will damage something, be it a component or another robot, before anyone can do anything to stop it. In cases where the robot is completing a process such as welding, if the robot were to get out of control, it could be very dangerous to anyone or anything in the general vicinity.

With adequate sensor and safety switch technology along with the use of guarding, the robot will be as safe as it can be, but it would still need to be monitored at timely intervals, be it by viewing it directly, monitoring it through the output results in quality engineering or from a control panel, where one human can monitor various robots at the same time.

Posted by Sophie Latham

Meeting 1 (09/03/2010)

In the first meeting the following actions were carried out:

- Transferral of contact details between group members
- Setting up of blog
- Job allocations
- Minutes of meeting