Autonomous Pneumatic Robot

WHAT

• Design and fabricate an autonomously actuated robot capable of traversing a straight channel 50ft long

• Utilize a servo for steering and control law to program the robot to stay within the channel walls

• Method of propulsion must be a single pneumatic cylinder using air from a 40psi tire

• Entirety of robot must be within a 12" diameter, centerline of tire must be 16" above ground

HOW

• Developed a proportional-integral (PI) microcontroller in Arduino IDE to fine-tune the robot's steering, eliminating steady-state drift error caused by mechanical design errors

• Experimentally calibrated the pneumatic piston's firing duty cycles, the servo's proportional and integral control gains, and the strength of the low pass digital filter implemented on the magnetometer's readings

• Performed a MATLAB simulation analysis to compare the robot's real impulse response to its simulated one

• Assisted in manufacturing the robot's main structure and in placement, mounting, and troubleshooting of electrical components

RESULTS

• Placed 1st in competition against 59 other teams (scored maximum points for 3 out of 4 runs)

• Robot withstood collisions from other robots with minimal effect on accuracy of waypoint guiding

• Optimized robot speed by implementing variable solenoid firing times depending on each section of the course and doubling the use of the hopper propulsion system as a braking mechanism

• Robot met all mechanical, electrical, and controls requirements