02- Automated Basketball Shooter

Team Members:

John Lyle, Alex Carlson, Vani Shanmugasundaram, & Nikhil Bathini

Summary:

Our goal for this project is to create an automatic basketball shooter that can consistently launch a mini basketball into the hoop.  To implement this we are creating a four-bar mechanism with a fully rotating input linkage. The output linkage would rotate backward to be loaded and then quickly released to propel the ball forward. The mechanism will be roughly the size of a medium desktop toy game that can shoot at different distances based on input velocity. Ultimately we'd like to be able to shoot the ball from various angles and distances without any human interference. 

Figure 1: Final Build

Figure 2: Demonstration of the robot working

Table of Contents:

• 2.1 Project Proposal
• 2.2 Initial Prototype
• 2.3 Design Process
• 2.4 Kinematic Analysis
• 2.5 Implementation
• 2.6 Final Demonstration
• 2.7 Conclusion & Future Work