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16.6 - Conclusions & Future Work

16.6 - Conclusions & Future Work

Accomplishments:

We were able to develop a car that not only toggles its wheel radius between 5cm and 7.8cm but also successfully drives in both configurations. We demonstrated that the car was able to climb over a 2cm step using the large radius wheels and duck under an overhang using the small radius wheels. While we never tested the car in an outdoor environment, this provides a proof-of-concept to highlight how the mechanism of toggling the wheel radius can effectively improve navigation through complex terrain.

 

Lessons Learned:

  • Fabricate early so we have time to revise.

  • We fabricated our design using 3d printed parts. After certain cycles of testing, 3D printed parts would loosen due to wear and tear.

  • Parts purchase and delivery can take longer than expected which can affect the planned timeline of the project.

  • Completing the kinematic analysis early helped us to minimize the errors when we assembled our design and our mechanism functioned the way we wanted.

 

Future Work Ideas:

We found that the expanded wheel had large discontinuities that caused the car to experience shocks while moving and would get caught on certain obstacles. In the future, we would like to explore options to enable a more continuous wheel circumference throughout expansion such as rubber, webbing, or a secondary expansion mechanism.

We also encountered issues with powering our car; the batteries we used needed to be replaced quite frequently during use. For future work, we may explore alternative energy options such as solar power, or different motors that would require a smaller voltage battery.

Ideally, our robot would be able to achieve an even greater difference between it’s height extremes. Further minimizing the smallest height of the car would allow it to transverse even more compact terrains.

We used a simple joystick with 5 inputs, i.e., front, back, right, left and a click. First four inputs, front, back, left, and right were used to move the car in various direction. We were limited to only one input to make the change in wheel’s radius thus, restricting the capability of our adjustable wheels to maximum and minimum position using the click input. For future, we can select a better input signal component which can take more input commands. This can helps us expand our range of commands to change radius to multiple position and not being limited to minimum and maximum only.

 

Tips for Future Groups:

  • TIW gets super busy late in the semester so try to get all of the fabrication done early.

  • It is a good idea to have multiple copy of a part when doing the fabrication especially for a 3D printed and laser cut parts. This can help save time if replacement is needed due to wear and tear during testing phase.

  • Parts those require a purchase should be ordered early so that parts are delivered on time and the design work will not get impacted due to missing parts.

 

Acknowledgements:

We would like to whole heartedly thank Dr. Symmank for all the foundational concepts and guidance to make this project possible. We would like to extend our thank you to wonderful TAs, David and Min-Geun, who guided us every week and checked on our progress to make this project a success. At last, thank you to all the members of Team 16 who turned a concept on a paper to a moving car, capable of changing its wheel radius like a sci-fi robot.