SRC 2012 and other prototypes

The STEM Robotics Competition of 2012 was great fun! We had students from elementary, middle and high school competing in 2 different levels of robotics competition. Some of our LHS Level 1 & Level 2 bots, run by the Propellar board:

Our students also made the animatronic wolf for the TSA competition. It moves his head side to side, shakes paws, and has pneumatic rear legs for standing up.

Our senior design students did a number of different projects, one of which was a motorized window, usful for the handicapped home owner.

To demo our prototyping machine to the freshman CAD class this year, I used a lightsaber STL file at 0.35 scale and another 4 of them at 0.10 scale, seen here with a referral and a LEGO clone trooper.  They still have to go into a 4 hour chemical bath that will eliminate the supprt (black) plastic to expose the final white ABS plastic.

Design & Prototype This!!!!

So, the senior design students have a project to allow a person to have sunglasses that move off to the side on a slide system. They got me the file to prototype it, and now it's time to remove the support plastic BUT the small parts get lost in the heated base bath. So, I had the students design a strainer locking system to hold the small parts (reusable!)


The other parts of the glasses system:


And the custom PROPELLAR circuit boards communicating through an XBEE. These boards (1 on the robot, one on the human) use the 9600 Baud rate of a common PS2 controller to make your robot do your bidding!

Here is the strainer put together (Death Star-ish) and an adapter to go from a window motor to a robot arm for the robotics students.

NXTs and Sensor Work

So the end of the first semester brings the T-BOTs and the NXT Complex Sensor Machines. The 2011-2012 NXT projects ranged in skill and some had good design, build and most importantly, autonomous functionality. Here is gallery. Enjoy.

working.............................. pictures and 2012 PROP circuit boards coming soon!

Velociraptor- gaurds area and is double speed active in the dark; can chomp on things w/ powered jaw

Gaurd Terminator Tank Bot- attacks things of the color RED and uses 2 controllers w/ communicaiton; also avoids walls

Portal Turret Bot - check this video clip for how real this model prototype was. The students were focused on the motions and sounds being close to the actual game.

:VIDEO:

Motorcycle Anti-Collision Bot - Drives around and avoid objects/ turns around w/ front steering


Here is a preview of 2012 STEM Robotics Competition student made (from scratch) circuit board: Powered by PROPELLAR, improved heat sinks and airflow (fan), RELAY available for the pneumatix.... this thing is going to power some nice 18lb. to 118lb. machines!