Light-Painting Robot

Electronics Update:

I designed and printed a new box for the electronics. It was made of two 3d-printed halves, which I plastic-welded together. I then added some Bondo and spray paint to make the box look cohesive. I also added some connectors to easily detach the electronics from the robot arm.

Base Update:

I mounted the robot to a 3/4" piece of MDF. I added some 1/2" bolts on the corners to prop the piece up and make room for the mounting screw heads/ends.

We completely revamped the base. Notably, I added a 3D-printed planetary gearbox to the base motor. This helped provide the base with more torque and overall improved the smoothness of the base DOF. I also designed and printed a scaffolding for the electronics, but we will continue to improve that area. 

Hardware Updates:

- Rewired the robot

- Added all the encoders

- Increased density of LEDs in the light bar 

- Added the base motor; connnected Raspberry Pi to the Odrive

- Added cooling for the steppers using heatsinks and fans 

Software Updates:

- Created a simple simulation to test the kinematics of the arm as it moves to a prescribed set of points

Current Challenges:

- We're having difficulty get the arm to move smoothly

Trying to get better edge detection by 1) converting the image to grayscale and 2) bumping the contrast before feeding it into the HED model.

Progress:

To start creating our robot, we first determined our size, speed, and resolution requirements. Then, we calculated the predicted torque on each joint to decide on our motors and CADed our robot. The robot consists of three main components: the wrist, elbow, and base. The wrist and elbow joints are driven by a NEMA 17 and timing belt pulleys. The base is driven by a BLDC using a capstan drive. After completing the design, we 3D-printed and assembled the mechanical components of the robot. We temporarily wired and programmed the elbow and wrist joints of the robot to create some preliminary photos.