Mechanical Design
Chassis | Arm and Claw | Drivetrain | Collision Bumper
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About the Competition
The 2016 Uberbots Competition is the 16th annual robotics design course and competition hosted by UBC Engineering Physics.
In teams of four, students spent 6 weeks designing and building a robot that could:
- Drive around a 8 x 16 ft "city", following roads marked with black electrical tape
- Sense and pickup passengers, aka. stuffed animals, emitting IR signals
- Drop off as many passengers as possible into a designated dropoff zone
- Back away from any collisions with other robots
Electrical Design
Tape-following | Infrared Detection | Signal Processing
Software Design
PID control | Navigation | Microcontroller Programming
Features of the Roombot
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Chassis
A circular chassis with multiple levels allowed for turning on the spot and detecting collisions from all sides.
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Drivetrain
A removable drivetrain module driven by two independent motors allowed for agile maneuvers and a flexible gear ratio.
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Arm & Claw
A 3-axis parallel arm was created to reach out for passengers at various distances, with a claw customized to fit passengers' body shape.
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Tape-Following
QRD1114 Optical Detectors were used in a comparator circuit to determine when the robot was on or off the tape. PID controls were implemented for self-correcting and smooth tape-following maneuvers.
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IR Detection
QSD124 Phototransistors were used in with biquad circuits to bandpass filter for 1kHz IR, amplify, and peak detect the signal from passengers and the dropoff zone. IR Sensors were used to faciliate navigation, pickup, and dropoff.
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Navigation
The competition map was stored in our robot, allowing it to calculate the available paths to traverse when seeking passengers and the optimal path to the dropoff once a passenger was acquired.