Fourth-year undergraduate student pursuing two B.S in Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering.
Prototype of a pick-and-place robot
Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering course group project (09/2021-12/2021)
Use model-based design to develop a prototype of a pick-and-place robot that uses an electromagnet to pick up metal discs and sort them according to their color.
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University of Michigan course group members: Daniela Mata, Assel Surshanova, Jared Sattelberg, Jacob Trent, and James Brynn.
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Project development
Hard Specifications:
Accurately drop disks onto zones, sort disks as fast as possible, avoid poor resolution of transmission ratio at the output, transmission angle must be between 30° and 150° and include at least one bonus zone.
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Soft Specifications:​
Safety, durability, repeatability, and good craftsmanship.
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All members used Solidworks to design the mechanism; the best one was finally chosen to start the ADAMS Simulations.​
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Simulations: Obtained power peaks right before the linkage decelerate and a high magnitude at the beginning of the deceleration. Input torque reaches the local maximum before slowdown but rises as the mechanism completes the motion.
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After the transmission ratio determination and power analysis, some design updates were done, and the final design was obtained.
Execution
A kit provided to the team with different tools and parts was used to assemble the linkages in the mechanism. The input link was fixed to the gear by two socket head bolts. The major torque transfer joint is in the middle of the transmission where the pinion meshes with the gear.
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Arduino Implementation: The linkage is controlled by a state machine. After being initialized, it switched between a group of discrete states, switching to a new state when certain change conditions are met.
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PID Control Implementation: PID controls affect the motor's position by changing the supply voltage. The results of three error functions were added to calculate a supply voltage each time the Arduino refreshed. An empirically determined friction compensation voltage was added to account for friction within the motor.
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Final design:
Linkage took 26 seconds to sort all disks (i.e., within the time limit)
The mechanism operated in less time.
Good accuracy when dropping the disks
Easy to assemble
Final Mechanism Test
Acknowledgement
Professor Mike Umbriac, University of Michigan.
Professor Chinedum Okwudire, University of Michigan.
Professor Wenda Tan, University of Michigan.
Michael Hahm, MECHENG350 GSI at University of Michigan.
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