18.6 - Conclusion and Future works

Conclusion

Our team designed DSLR (Drawing sketch like Real) robot that consists of a helical cam with a follower system, a gear train system and a rotating cylinder platform. We were able to accomplish our primary objectives that our robot mechanism can draw the object that are described with lines and complex curves. To be specific, DSLR robot is able to draw the 2D object by integrating the dynamics of the helical cam with follower and the rotating cylinder that account for vertical and horizontal axes of our drawing respectively. Also, we were able to design the geometry of the helical cam by encoding the complicated geometry of our object of interest and prove that this helical cam produced the drawing of our object as close as the real one. We were able to demonstrate that DSLR robot can draw longhorn logo quite accurate and our drawing mechanism is robust enough to obtain reproducible results.

Future works

One of the main problems we faced during the project was that the follower was not able to show smooth riding when the radius of the helical cam increases abruptly. Our team resolved this issue by adding the spring to the system so that the follower is able to overcome the abrupt changes in increment of radius. Although this issue was solved, we faced other issue that while the follower followed the path of sudden decrease in radius of the helical cam, it did not to touch the track on the helical cam due to the presence of the spring. We dealt with this problem by manually tuning the condition of the spring but there's still tiny space from the track that affects our accurate drawing result. Our future work would be to come up with the additional system or way that can replace this fine-tuning work, guaranteeing the smooth following and an accurate drawing result.

Lessons we learned and tips for future groups

From this project, our team learned that the building prototype was hugely important step. We have experienced that some of our prototypes, which we thought it would work, turned into the design that cause system to be unstable or unwanted outcomes. By designing many prototypes with many iterations during prototype process, we could come up with lots of ideas and finally were able to design our final product to be accurate, precise and robust. The tip our team can give to future groups is to start designing prototypes early so that your teams are able to find unwanted problem and resolve it early. Before jumping into the final product, try to assemble all components in CAD software not to encounter any interference when realizing the design. Also, don't hesitate to reach out to TAs and professor to get any advice or help when the things are not going well.

Acknowledgements

Our team would like to thank Connor Hennig for assistance and guidance on what our team had in struggle with throughout the project. We also appreciate Dr. Meredith Symmank and Aayush Parikh for giving feedbacks on our prototype during the meeting and office hours. We are thankful to TIW staffs for providing lot of resources and help on laser-cut, 3d-printing and material cuttings.