Pick and Place Robot

Course or Client

MEEN 667 (Graduate Mechatronics)

Completion Date

Fall 2024

Skills

Electronics prototyping, Project scheduling and Management, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, Logic design/programming, PID implementation

Challenge: design and build an industry applicable mechatronic system with analog and digital components and a real time digital feedback controller

IMG_5790 (1).MOV

For this course our team was tasked with creating an industry-relevant mechatronic system that utilized analog and digital components such as sensors and actuators as well as a real time digital feedback controller. My teammates were Ahmed Khalil and Konstantin Nelson.

We brainstormed many ideas for mechatronic systems and settled on a 2-axis pick and place robot because of its industry relevance and relative flexibility and simplicity of implementation. Pick and place robots are used commonly in manufacturing automation, and our robot would simulate a scenario encountered, detecting the position of an object and taking it to a predetermined delivery location.

BOM and Product Architecture

Electronics included:

Analog sensors [ 5539 type photoresistors, HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor]
Digital sensors [limit switches]
actuators [ MG995 continuous servo motors, NEMA 17 bipolar stepper motors]
Arduino Mega 2560
Adafruit motor shield

Mechanical components designed and manufactured:

servo-driven rack and pinion for vertical axis (3D-printed)
servo-driven ball gripper (3D-printed)
ping pong ball positioning tray (3D-printed)

Learnings and Future work

This project taught me a lot about project planning and management. As the project planner on our team, I had to learn the strengths of each of our team members and delegate tasks effectively so we could reach milestones in time.

For the system itself, it could be improved by increasing the rigidity of the 3D-printed components by fine-tuning tolerances, altering cross-sectional geometry, and adding supports. This would allow for faster gripper movement and operation.

Additionally, the system could be programmed to sort objects based on their color. This could be implemented with the current assembly since the photoresistors can detect color by measuring the light reflected.

Next project

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