FEH Robot Project

A significant accomplishment and project for me was the Fundamentals of Engineering Honors Robot Project that took place from January until April 2018. This project required a lot of dedication, teamwork, and communication, all while learning how to build a robot from scratch to accomplish specific tasks and how to minimize the $160 budget. Overall, I learned a lot about time management and leadership being in a group of four and having to delegate responsibilities and tasks, and I also had a lot of fun problem solving and working with my group.

The group was put together at the end of January, and the robot challenge was introduced. One of our first tasks was to create a schedule and brainstorm preliminary design concepts. Initially, we brainstormed separately and then came together and combined all of our ideas to maximize different factors, . Eventually, we came up with an idea of what we thought would be best, although we had not yet explored options to find out what would actually work best for us. We learned how to make a concept scoring matrix to decide what success criteria for each design would be best. We came to the conclusion that a wooden two-wheel skid with a rotating forklift would be cheapest and easiest to build.

The next step was to create a mockup out of cardboard, pencils, tape, and hot glue to try and represent what our robot might look like without using too many actual resources. After creating this, the team really thought the use of cardboard was fun, so we came up with our team name, Needs More Cardboard.

Next, some basic navigation functions were written in C++ to allow the robot to move forward and backwards, turning left and right, and driving straight until hitting a wall. These were written using shaft encoding and bump switches, but not Robot Positioning System (RPS).

To make the robot based on our ideas, we had to pick a chassis, motors, and specific mechanisms for completing the tasks. We thoroughly analyzed the different options to determine which would be best for us: a wooden chassis because it was small, easily changeable, and lightweight; Vex motors because they were low-cost, reliable, had good torque vs. speed, and were easy to use.

As time progressed, the robot had weekly performance tests for points where we had to accomplish specific goals. We had the whole week prior to test our code and add what was needed to the robot, and scored perfectly (including the bonuses) on all four tests. These tests were helpful because they allowed us to stay on target for the final competition day, and we could refine issues that arose.

Finally, April came around and we had the individual competition where we had to complete the whole course for as many points in as little time as possible to be ranked for final competition. However, we faced issues due to the fluctuating Proteus charge. So, our individual competition scores were not ideal, as our highest score was 83/100. Luckily, we had a week before the final competition and so we could make a lot of changes, including changing the skid to two spoons, and changing the path the robot took.

Competition day finally rolled around on April 7, 2018. The team’s strategy for the course can be found in the image below.

The first three Round Robin runs were not as good as anticipated, and there were several problems that arose on competition day. The team focused on trying to solve these issues as fast and as efficiently as possible. This ended up working, as the first round of Head to Head competition was a perfect run as shown in the video below!

Victory was not as close as we had hoped, because in the Sweet 16 round of Head to Head competition, the robot’s wheel got caught on the course, and ended up with 81 points, and did not move forward into the Final Four.

We were very disappointed, but ultimately had a lot of fun on competition day to see our hard work pay off. We also received 2nd place for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering by Honda R&D for the use of cardboard!

This project taught me the importance of communication in group work and camaraderie. The values I earned are so prevalent in the engineering world and what my future career will look like – even now, during my internship, I see the gravity of communication and teamwork. Although I do not necessarily see robotics as a future endeavor, this meaningful experience will guide always follow me to future jobs, internships, and other opportunities.

Additional and more extensive information about this project can be found on the documentation website.

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