TerminEDer 2.1.8: A Game-Playing Autonomous Robot
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
ME218B - Smart Product Design Applications |
2019
Stanford, CA |
TerminEDer 2.1.8 starts in the southern hemisphere in the competition finals (1:36:06):
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TerminEDer 2.1.8 (affectionately named after our 218B instructor) autonomously navigates around an 8x8' playing field to collect "trash" (foam balls), sort trash into recycling and non-recycling, and deposit recyclables and non-recyclables into appropriate recycling centers and landfills. Designed and built in just 3.5 weeks, TerminEDer quickly transformed from a few sketches and diagrams on a whiteboard into a functional robot with ten sensors and complex software.
This project included:
TerminEDer came in second place at our class competition! A full project report can be found at termineder218.weebly.com.
This project included:
- Mechanical design of a robot that could fit within 1x1x1'
- Electrical design for robot hardware and signal conditioning
- Software design of hierarchical state machines to implement gameplay autonomy
TerminEDer came in second place at our class competition! A full project report can be found at termineder218.weebly.com.
Skills Developed: state charts, CAD, integration of software modules, perfboarding, rapid prototyping, collaboration, time management
Greatest Failure: focusing solely on low-level design at the beginning of the project. We focused on making sure all of the hardware worked properly at the beginning of the project, leaving the implementation of state charts to the final week. As a result, we realized we would need two sonar sensors to implement our navigation strategy as intended with only a few days remaining, at which point we decided it was not worth our time to redesign our mechanical system to accommodate for an added sensor. In the end, we were still able to implement our original strategy, but it's effectiveness was compromised due to the fact that we had only one sonar sensor on board.
Greatest Moment: watching our robot crush it at the competition - after many late nights and a "magical smoke" scare just a couple nights prior to the competition, it was incredible to see our work in action.
Greatest Failure: focusing solely on low-level design at the beginning of the project. We focused on making sure all of the hardware worked properly at the beginning of the project, leaving the implementation of state charts to the final week. As a result, we realized we would need two sonar sensors to implement our navigation strategy as intended with only a few days remaining, at which point we decided it was not worth our time to redesign our mechanical system to accommodate for an added sensor. In the end, we were still able to implement our original strategy, but it's effectiveness was compromised due to the fact that we had only one sonar sensor on board.
Greatest Moment: watching our robot crush it at the competition - after many late nights and a "magical smoke" scare just a couple nights prior to the competition, it was incredible to see our work in action.