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On the day of the presentation, our car was able to achieve a near prefer parallel parking on the first attempt. However, due to roughly tuned software, the car was not able to reliably recreate this result in the subsequent runs. Overall, we deem our design and concept to be a success, although the mechanical assemblage can use a rework. 

Conclusions and Future Works

Reflecting on our project, one area that we could have improved upon is the mechanical hardware to make the prototype more robust. Professor Deshpande pointed out in the demonstration that the rotation of our revolute joints would be smoother if we had used bearings and unthreaded screws. Furthermore, due to some of our parts being 3D-printed, the tolerances of through holes could have been better, which would result in less play between some of the connections. As for the gear teeth, we could have enlarged the size of the gear teeth by the kerf of the laser cutter itself. This would allow a better meshing and may have prevented the situation of gears being stuck during the transition between dwelling and movement. If the gears were laser cut with some parts of the teeth taken out prior in the Retina Engrave design, that may have made the transition more accurate as well. With more experience, we would have also been able to foresee the problems powering the main crank motor and address that ahead of time. If we were to upgrade our prototype and improve it further, one potential area we could explore is that of making an autonomous parallel parking robot. We could attach ultrasonic sensors to measure the distance away from the parking lot, which would be converted to motor inputs so that the car can park itself, regardless of how far it is away from the parking lot. In conclusion, we believe that this project was a successful and fruitful one, where we achieved our original goals and learned many insights about mechanical design and robotics along the journey. 

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