I spent four years designing, fabricating, and assembling a robot tasked with launching t-shirts off of the ice into the crowd at hockey games. It had to adhere to numerous constraints and design challenges. It had to fit through a single door, launch as many shirts as possible, change launch range on the fly, drive at 10 mph, maneuver on ice and other surfaces, along with many other constraints. The robot was designed using Autodesk Inventor. Once all the parts were drawn, fabrication was performed using routers, CNC mills, laser engravers, and 3D printers using tool paths generated with Mastercam and other software. The robot is controlled using three Arduino microcontrollers interfaced with motor controllers, relays, encoders, and many other sensors and actuators. The robot was programmed using the Arduino language to have semi-autonomous functionality.
First time testing the rotation of the barrel assembly. Checking the acceleration, alignment, and durability of the 3D printed drive gear.
Testing the maneuverability of the robot fully assembled under full load.