The Concept phase, integration of the sub-systems!

Last Friday it was D-day... 3 teams had to present their concept for the CCM trophy challenge, only 2 would continue to actually building their design.

But first I would like to introduce you to Tommy, the housekeeping robot.

Tommy is designed to help personnel in homes for the elderly focus on the tasks at hand, while Tommy takes care of the routine jobs. His looks have been designed to make him look like a teddy bear, while avoiding the idea of a humanoid robot.  Tommy moves around using 2 separate powered wheels, following his "highway" of white lines trough the building. This gives the elderly confidence in where Tommy can go, and where he cannot. All these choices are to make sure Tommy does not upset the people he is helping. To make sure Tommy avoids things on the track we outfitted him with kinect sensors and object recognition, Tommy will always be in service of the humans he is helping. This is a bit costly tough, as the full concept would cost about €2365,-

So for the Trophy challenge we want  to build a prototype that can be used to test the essential systems and the speed of the total system.

The prototype consists of a pneumatic cylinder to make the arm adjustable, for the hand we used a cylinder with a diameter of 2.5 times the bottle we need to pick up, filled with air cushions. This makes picking up the bottle no longer a process of exact measuring to make a hand grab the bottle, we just place the cylinder over the middle of the serving tray and fill the cushions. To make the height of the hand adjustable we want to use a scissor lift, this is a lot easier then say for example bringing an arm up from the waist of the robot to shoulder height.  Movement and navigation will be the same as for Tommy, except from the Kinect sensors. We will use LDR sensors to detect the line, and make the prototype follow it from begin to end. To give the robot feedback when the bottle is in the cylinder we use IR sensors with a blind spot of 5 cm, meaning if it stops seeing things its time to inflate the cushions.  Powering the wheels will be 2 transmission engines with a relative high torque, moving the prototype around at a speed of max 1.5 m/s. All our systems will be powered by a battery placed in the back of the lower part of the robot, to keep the center of gravity close to the ground.

The price of this prototype is of more realistic proportions.

The upper part is the planning we made at the start of the project, the lower part is the balance as we present it to you now. Meaning we can build this prototype at a cost of €948,51. This means that if we get sponsoring from CCM, we can and will build our prototype!

Then its now time for the unveiling of D-day, we went to CCM in Neunen, The Netherlands, for a tour trough the facility, a presentation of the company, and presenting our projects to them. Being team 3, we had to wait for almost 1.5 hour to give our presentation. Then the moment of truth came, and I had to represent the work of me and my 5 colleges, it had been a while since I was nervous like that Friday afternoon...

Then after some questions our teachers went backstage with the engineers from CCM to make the decision. 

And as it turns out, we are trough! This means next week more information on Tommy in stead of a totally new project! 

CCM was gladly suppressed with the level of tough all the teams put in their design, and pointed out that is was because they had to drop 1 team they did... 

Now its time for celebration, feedback and how to continue will be handled on Monday  as we are going to materialize our concept!

As usual, if you have questions, feedback, or you want to sponsor our project, just leave a message!