Marj Remote Rover
Team: Anusha Sonthalia | Rowan Dixon | Justice Duru | Michael Hofmann
Skills Developed
Mechanisms
Testing
In groups of 4, over the course of 4 weeks, we had to design and build 2 rovers. The first rover (seen on the right) had to be autonomous, and could be placed on the floor of a room and drive around without colliding with anything. It also had to be controlled remotely, via a mobile phone, and sense whether an item was emitting an ultrasonic signal, or whether it was magnetic.
3 IR emitters/receivers were placed at the front of the vehicle, which would sense an obstacle once 5cm away. The rover would then back up and turn away from the obstacle that it had sensed. It would then continue to travel on its journey.
Electronics
Design
On the back of the rover is an arm connected to a stepper motor, which can be lowered or raised on command. Inside the arm is a Hall Effect sensor, to detect magnetic fields, and an ultrasonic sensor. If either one detected an obstruction, then the respective coloured LED lights up. The rover is controlled from a mobile phone, and had to race other rovers to sense all the different emitting 'rocks' in the final challenge.
The second rover had to also be controlled remotely. However, this one had to launch a projectile 2.5 metres into a small goal. My group decided to use 2 dc motors counter rotating, connected to rubber edged disks. These would spin up before a small stepper motor, with an arm attached, pushed the projectile inbetween the disks. This proved to be a very efficient and reliable way of firing at the goal.
