Conclusions and Future Work - Mellinger

After designing, simulating, building, and redesigning the robot, I am pleased with its performance. It matched the expected MATLAB simulated velocity quite well. I was never able to attach a cheese grater and test it on the cheese, however.  I think it would be worthwhile to upgrade all the joints the steel bearing and shafts before doing this. Also, I would like to conduct an experiment to determine the force required to grate the cheese. There is an initial force required to start the cut, but also there is a kinetic friction coefficient on the blade that depends on how fast the blade is sliding. These calculations might substantially change the required link lengths of the robot. In any case, I enjoyed building the robot and from it learned a lot about using 3D printer – what it can and cannot do. I am most proud of applying what I learned in class – the kinematic analysis and applying it to create the MATLAB animation.