for robotics class

“Robix Robot Lab Report”

                                          Members: Jared Finger, Ibrahim Aldhafeeri

ABSTRACT

Background- The study in this lab focuses on teaching the essential beginning tools for building/programing a basic robot using the provided “Robix Kit”. Students are given freedom to create what type of robot they want to perform an end result.

Goal- This exercise is designed to teach basic concepts of robotics, preparing students for more difficult tasks in coming projects. The students will become more fluent in coding, and this beginning project should allow them to run into common physical robotics issues providing insight towards their larger industrial projects.

Design-  The robot built was an arm with a gripper. This arm features six servos, five of which control the different movement axes for five degrees of freedom. With the built orientation we have a side to side work envelope of approximately 200-220 degrees, and also a vertical work envelope of approximately 120-150 degrees.

Results- There were some working issues with the long moment arm of the built robot, but the task we gave ourselves to complete reached towards the outer edge of our work envelope roughly 180 degrees from each other from the center of the robot base. Many adjustments were needed both in code and on the arm periodically to find our targets on our mini golf track, and in the end we were successful in repeatable successive trial runs.

Conclusions- Although this project was a success it was tedious trying to keep the tensions in the bolts to servo horns just right so they wouldn’t back themselves out and the robot fall apart or be moved out of position. If this was a personal project and not a school project this problem probably could have been easily fixed with a small application of loctite threadlocker, but since this is a kit to be reused by future students we did the best with what we had without adding material that isn’t easily removed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Project Background-  

Solution Need-

Goal-

PROJECT DESIGN AND DETAILS

Design Introduction- Our robot arm consists of six R/C servos, four main metal connecting members, a Usbor servo controller, metal base, and a tower that sits in the base that holds a plastic piece to connect to the servo horn on unit itself. Two servos are used for side to side motion, and up and down motion. At the end of the arm we have a servo that is used to change the orientation of the gripper, and the last servo is used to open and close the gripper. The attempt of this robotic arm is to hopefully simulate the range of motion a human harm has, even though the human arm is much more sophisticated.

Robot Specifications-               

Inputs and Outputs

How the Robot Works

Code

Schematic-

RESULTS

General Results- Our design had flaws because of the maximized reach and work envelope, but was necessary because our task pushed our robot to the extremes of it’s capability. The robot arm’s job was to pick up ball one from position one and transport it to the opposite side of the work envelope to release it into a small target area on a sloped track that would have the ball roll through our “mini golf” track to the target cup or “hole in one”, after this it would repeat itself but it would find the second ball at position two and would release it in the same target area on the opposite side. In the end of this project we were successful in multiple trial runs.

Reliability- For this project we wanted the robot to arrive to its positions (within quarter inch), it needed to run flawlessly through code (doesn’t freeze), and it needed to be able to stay together (not fall apart), this is how we defined reliability in the function of this robot. Our biggest problem with this project was the fact that our arm had a lot of weight at the end in terms of a long moment arm. This made the screws at a couple servo joints to back themselves from their threads over extended use, so we had to establish a reasonable amount of trials the arm should be able to withstand before major failure or we should check the joints. We decided that twenty trials in a row should be doable before something serious may happen. In testing we had ran the script 20 times to see if the arm would meet our specifications. In the first set of twenty trials the arm failed to meet position within a quarter inch three times. On the second set of twenty trials we had problems with the software freezing twice, I don’t know what could be the cause of this if it had been a problem from the computer end or the Usbor controller but we made note of this. Both trial sets survived staying intact, however the joints at servos #2,4 were way out of position #2 being the worst (almost about to detach). Although this doesn’t affect our criterion for the reliability of this robot it did have a major affect on accuracy.

Accuracy-

CONCLUSIONS (need exactly 4 paragraphs here; content per instruction)

APPENDIX

Raw Code

move 1 to 1360, 2 to 1400, 3 to 370, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to 380;

move 1 to 1110, 2 to 1400, 3 to 370, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to 380;

move 1 to 1110, 2 to 1400, 3 to 1120, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to 380;

move 1 to 1110, 2 to 1400, 3 to 1120, 4 to 1120, 5 to 30, 6 to 380;

move 1 to 1110, 2 to 1400, 3 to -280, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to 380;

move 1 to 1200, 2 to 1360, 3 to -580, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to 380;

move 1 to 1200, 2 to 1360, 3 to -580, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to -680;

move 1 to 1256, 2 to 1360, 3 to -580, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to -680;

move 1 to 1200, 2 to 1360, 3 to -580, 4 to -460, 5 to 30, 6 to -848;

move 1 to 1198, 2 to 1360, 3 to -950, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to -680;

move 1 to 1282, 2 to 1360, 3 to -975, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to -680;

move 1 to 1198, 2 to 1360, 3 to -950, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to 1198, 2 to 1360, 3 to 580, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to 1360, 3 to 580, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to -130, 3 to 580, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to -130, 3 to 990, 4 to -660, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to -130, 3 to 990, 4 to 890, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to -130, 3 to 1400, 4 to 890, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to -130, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1382, 2 to -140, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to 30, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -1090, 2 to -510, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -930, 2 to -540, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -930, 2 to -820, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1370, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -820, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1370, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1370, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1300, 4 to 1400, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1350, 4 to 1400, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1350, 4 to 1380, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1240, 4 to 1380, 5 to -1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1240, 4 to 1380, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -950, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1380, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -1020, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -1019, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -968, 2 to -1002, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -968, 2 to -813, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -1002, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -780, 2 to -1082, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -593, 2 to -1210, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 1290;

move 1 to -668, 2 to -1002, 3 to 1380, 4 to 1400, 5 to 1400, 6 to 130;

move 1 to -668, 2 to -1002, 3 to 1400, 4 to 420, 5 to 1400, 6 to 130;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to -1002, 3 to 1400, 4 to 420, 5 to 1400, 6 to 130;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 588, 3 to 1400, 4 to 420, 5 to 1400, 6 to 130;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 588, 3 to 1400, 4 to 420, 5 to 1400, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 588, 3 to 1400, 4 to 420, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 594, 3 to 20, 4 to 420, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 668, 3 to 20, 4 to 420, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 668, 3 to 20, 4 to 593, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 668, 3 to -458, 4 to 593, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 718, 3 to -458, 4 to 593, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 718, 3 to 2, 4 to 593, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 2, 4 to 593, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 180, 4 to 593, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 180, 4 to 533, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -370, 4 to 533, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -370, 4 to 143, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -460, 4 to 143, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -460, 4 to 113, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -500, 4 to 113, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -500, 4 to 23, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -500, 4 to 63, 5 to -50, 6 to -160;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to -500, 4 to 63, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 620, 4 to 63, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to 1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 1390, 4 to 123, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 1390, 4 to 123, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 1400, 4 to 123, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to 728, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -1400, 2 to -512, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -930, 2 to -512, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -930, 2 to -792, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -792, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -982, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to -50, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -982, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to 560, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -1052, 3 to 1400, 4 to 1400, 5 to 560, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -1052, 3 to 1250, 4 to 1400, 5 to 560, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -1025, 3 to 1250, 4 to 1400, 5 to 560, 6 to 1000;

move 1 to -700, 2 to -1025, 3 to 1250, 4 to 1400, 5 to 560, 6 to 210;