About the Class
Stanford core graduate-level mechatronics class part 2 final project.
Project Decription from the Course Staff
Goal:
The goal of this project is to provide you with an opportunity to apply your knowledge to solve an open-ended problem. The task is to design and build a machine that can autonomously navigate the Peterson Pediment and successfully mine resources.
Purpose:
The underlying purpose of this project is to give you some experience in integrating all that you have learned in ME218 as well as your prior courses. To gain this experience, you will design and implement an autonomous mobile robot that can compete in a game of speed, skill and strategy against machines constructed by other teams from the class.
Background:
The colony has established a foothold on Mars, and surveys by the research geologists have indicated that there may be rich veins of rare element ores—including element 218, Obtainium. You’re a young engineer working for Carryer-Kenny Holdings (CKH)—a large multinational conglomerate with interests in nearly every industry—and want to make your name (and your fortune) on Mars. The shareholders have paid for your trip to Mars, and gave you a pair of Mineral Identification, Nucleation, and Extraction Rigs (MINERs), so all you have to do is find some ore and make your fortune… or at least enough to pay for your ticket home. Unfortunately they forgot to give you a way to move the MINERs around, so you’ll have to build a TRACTOR for Commercializing The Obtainable Resources (TRACTOR) yourself to get the MINERs to where they’re needed. Your intel suggests the most concentrated deposits of Obtainium can be found in Peterson Pediment1, and so you’ve hauled your MINERs and TRACTOR out to the desolation, far from the existing human habitation.
Be careful though; while a permitting system is in place, Mars is a long way from the law and other corporations—including your chief competitor, Gumerlock Heavy Industries (GHI)—are out to beat you to the rocks.
The Task:
Your TRACTORs will be operating on the field located in the SPDL, and then competing against each other on the same field after it has been moved to the Atrium of Bldg. 550 (our classroom building) during the public presentations.
You haul sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don’t call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store Tennessee Ford, Sixteen Tons
Final Report
For our final report, we made a website!
My Contributions
I was responsible for the complete mechanical design and manufacture. I designed and fabricated the chassis, drivetrain, bumpers, electromagnet housing, and all electronic component mounts.
Final Project Video
Skills
Computer-Aided Design (Solidworks), Laser Cutting, 3D Printing, Hand Tools, C