PICK AND PLACE-UCSD CLASS PROJECT
In one of my Senior design classes at UCSD, one project was given where the goal was to design and build a robot which could pick and place small plastic cylinders onto a rotating turntable. We had used the school's laser cutter before, but this was our first introduction into micro-controllers, more specifically the Arduino.
As this was a team project, I was given the responsibility of coming up with the physical design of the device, while my partner focused more on the code. My idea was to use a cam shaped wheel to open and close a pair of tongs, which would grab each cylinder from the loading area and place it onto the turntable. As we got about halfway through the 10 week course we learned that all 9 other teams were going with a flip design in which the cylinder was picked up and flipped upside down onto the turntable. After weighing the pros and cons of both designs, we decided to try the innovative approach and move forward with the initial design instead of just following suit. After building, troubleshooting and fine tuning the code positions for each cylinder, we had a working pick and place machine. For the competition where you only had one shot, we actually tied for first in getting 7 out of 8 cylinders placed correctly. In the end, going with our design worked out as we did as well as the other top teams, but we also showed we could do it with an innovative design.