11. Applications and Implications¶

Propose a final project masterpiece that integrates the range of units covered, 
      answering:
         What will it do?
         Who's done what beforehand?
         What will you design?
         What materials and components will be used?
         Where will come from?
         How much will they cost?
         What parts and systems will be made?
         What processes will be used?
         What questions need to be answered?
         How will it be evaluated?
      Your project should incorporate 2D and 3D design,
         additive and subtractive fabrication processes,
         electronics design and production,
         embedded microcontroller interfacing and programming,  
         system integration and packaging
      Where possible, you should make rather than buy
         the parts of your project
      Projects can be separate or joint, but need to show individual 
         mastery of the skills, and be independently operable

What will it do?¶

The device will be a “BB8 droid unit.” It will be a self balancing-spherical robot powered by a holonomic drive system. I want to make it so it can be controlled remotely (with an application) or move around autonomously. I hope to incorporate more fun features if I have time, like lights, sounds, etc, but the first two things are my two major goals.

Who’s done what beforehand?¶

Many people have done it before. Some examples are the ‘MiniBall’ by Beam, an Open source one named Moti there are commercial ones made like the ones at sphero, and several past fab academy students (Shirly), have made as well. Most notably, the robot I want to make is one of the most adorable robots in a very famous movie franchises (Star Trek, obviously).

This isn’t a novel idea. So many different people have made the key components and have come up with their own variations. All of my ideas are a conglomerate of their work and my own thoughts after research. But specifically, I found this ball on Thingiverse which I plan to modify because it is very simplistic and simple.

I also have been looking at lots of libraries of mecanum wheels and omni-wheels. I drew a set of mecanum wheels in Fusion but I didn’t design them, I just looked at generic pictures of mecanum wheels, loosely followed a tutorial, and looked at these source.

I found mecanum wheels here that I may use. I will make slight changes to them, but any mecanum wheels I choose will have similar features, so I will probably use someone else’s pre-designed work.

What will you design?¶

• The holonomic drive system and it’s framework.

*The design file for the robot’s head and the framework extension that will keep the head balanced on top of the rolling robot.

• Input board, output board, the electronic systems that they are contained in and the things that make it necessary for them to interact together.

What materials and components will be used?/Where will it come from/ How much will they Cost?¶

Most of my materials for the framework are going to be printed, cut, or milled from wood/PLA/copper. Most of the parts that would need to be bought are for the electronics, but not all of the electronics have been designed yet. Non-specific parts like pin head connectors, resistors, capacitors… etc. I have a general idea of the special parts I will need, but I still need to make some design decisions before ordering parts, so some fields are left intentionally unspecific.

What parts and systems will be made?¶

The exterior ball (shell) of the droid The drive system Includes motors, wheels, and the breakout boards of sensors and microcontrollers that will be interfaced with the drive system. The head Includes the magnets and the framework to support it. Input: Possibly a system of infrared sensor input boards around the robot (For autonomous movement, so knows its surroundings. Output: Motors, part of the drive system Bluetooth module connected to the I2C and drive system. This is so the droid can be connected to a phone and controlled remotely.

What processes will be used?¶

The physical framework/structure: 3D Design, Fusion 360: The outside shell, the head and the wheels (Definitely the head. The shell and/or the wheels might not be designed by me). 2D Design, Corel Draw/Inkscapes: The framework that will support the wheels, motors, and house all internal components. 3d Printing, additive technology: the outside shell, the head, the wheels (they will all have nested components and things that could not be made easily with subtractive technology Laser cut/milling, subtrative technology: The framework. This will probably be slot fit/tabbed. I am leaning towards milling with the CNC bot because I think I will be able to get stronger, sturdier material but I also need to consider how heavy it would be. MY project needs to be light. Electronics: Input/Output/Microcontrollers/Bluetooth… Electronics Design: ElectDesign all the PCB’s Bantam Tools/ Bantam Othermill Pro to mill the PCB Programming: Atmel or Arduino IDE or Terminal Applications Programming: TBD. Basic idea is an app that can transmit instructions to the motors based on the info it receives from the input boards Networking and Communications: I2C for the input boards communication and/or Bluetooth for the app

What questions need to be answered?¶

The biggest problems I need to fix/ still don’t know what to do about are as follows: Holonomic Drive systems can be 4 wheels, 3 wheels, and have Mecanum or Omni Wheels. At first glance I thought 3 wheel Mecanum Drive would be better. What are the advantages/disadvantages of both? Which one is better for my specific design? There is a program I found called [Labview] (https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/labview.html)that will allow me to simulate and later program mecanum wheels easily. Going off of this, I don’t know exactly what type of motors I need. I think I know what I need. I don’t know how strong the magnets for the heads need to be. I also doesn’t know exactly what size the droid will be in the end so I don’t really know what to base my “magnet calculations” off of until I determine bb8’s final dimensions. I think I will just boy multiple magnets and build in a way to keep adding them if they are too weak I was having problems with my input board week (I made an IMU board). I got it to a place where it “functions” but I need to make sure I have a product that functions well enough and fast enough that it works for my final project. I also don’t yet know how to interface the input boards through I2C (how accelerometers/gyroscopes/IMU’s network) to the motors, and I don’t know the programming or electrical things I need to make the input and outputs interact with each other functionally. I hope with networking/communications and output week some of my questions will be answered. Also, are there other sensors I should have been considering for my input board that are going to be necessary but I glossed over during input week? I believe what I have is satisfactory, adding more data might make it more precise, which is something I need to look into, but I believe an accelerometer/gyroscope can be used alone for this type of machine. One of my goals is being able to have a robot that can be controlled but that can also be autonomous. I don’t know if doing both is practical or will work. I believe I would need some sort of sensor (infrared or something else) so the robot knew its surroundings, write a new code for autonomous movement, and I am still not sure what output sensor this system would use. Admittedly, I will probably end up doing one or the other, but I wanted to include my ideas here.

How will it be evaluated?¶

I think it should be evaluated on the droid’s ability to move around, and stay balanced, and respond to the “remote” controls quickly, efficiently, and successfully

Schedule:¶

I am going to start by looking through past weeks at all the projects I have done (with my final project in mind) and make sure I have developed these ideas into where they need to be for the final project. I will continue to look into the things I am unsure of and start to experiment with making those parts. It is very important that as I make these plans, I coordinate with my teachers to figure out realistic expectations for this project, materials I can get, resources I have available, etc. (Especially with limited access to the lab from COVID-19).