Beam-Climbing Robot
In this project, my team and I were tasked with designing, fabricating, and testing a robot to move as fast as possible up an I-Beam while carrying an offset load. To see our full report, click here.
To achieve this deliverable, we used a design process that blended intuition, concept generation, back-of-the-envelope analysis, computational analysis, models of motors and gears, design for mass efficiency, empirical testing, and technical writing. We fabricated our design using our personal 3D printers and the provided components.
This assignment gave me experience in the design of mechanical systems involving electric motors and gears, mass efficient assemblies with multiple custom and catalog components, to solve a complex problem in a team setting.
I led the transmission analysis for the robot, which can be found here, and is described in more detail below.
Transmission Analysis and Excel Optimization
I developed an Excel program that optimized our robot's main driving wheel radius, and its motor's gearbox ratio, given the characteristics of the motor and required torque on the driving wheel to move the robot up the beam as fast as possible. Here are some examples of the calculations I did:
