NED Robotics Group

NED UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

NED ROBOTICS
GROUP

Master the Mystery of Machines

Maarij Raheem

NED Robotics Group

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route

to victory. Tactics without strategy is the
noise before defeat. (Sun Tzu) (Book: The Art of War)

NED Robotics Group

Mechanical Structure
A simple and stable mechanical structure is the most important thing while making a robot. Before
designing a robot following things must be considered:
Identifying the task
Keeping in mind the dimensional constraints
Planning and designing an appropriate structure which includes CAD drawings and use
simulation if possible.
Consult an experience machinist in order to rectify the design problems because most of the
things we consider in our design cant actually be performed practically.
Consultation with the members of electronics is very important as mechanical structure is of no
worth if one cant control it electronically.
Always have a backup plan or an alternate solution in mind. So that in case your design fails you
can apply the alternate one.
The detailed knowledge about various mechanical considerations during designing a robot is as
under:

1. Base design

2. What materials are

suitable for the design?

3. Keep the center of

gravity as low as possible.

4. Fastening elements
5. chattering

MECHANICAL DESIGNING
The base normally consists of a rectangular Metallic structure with
four wheels. The wheels are coupled with the base and the motors to
give the drive to the robot. This is the first task in designing the
structure of the robot. It is highly recommended to have a test drive
of the base before designing rest of the robot. This Test drive should
ensure smooth movement in forward direction at maximum
allowable speed. In Backward direction. Taking a 90 degree turn.
Rotating on 360 degrees at its geometrical center. Once your base
hase gone through all of these tasks. You can rock any arena.
Material selection should be of great importance. Aluminum is
considered to be the best for robot designing having the following
properties.
strength, hardness, toughness, density
durability
The materials cost and availability are also important factors.
Acrylic Sheets can also be used in the base. It look very attractive.
One thing that usually lacks in the mechanical structure is the
centre of gravity being too high keep the centre of gravity of
the robot as low as possible. This would provide stability to
the structure which would ultimately result in smooth turning.
L Key bolts have good strength and must be given preference
in fitting operations.
Adequate support for sagging members needs to be in place
to eliminate chattering.

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6. Weight distribution

7. Weight
8. Mechanism
9.Motors
10. Driving Motors

This is the most critical part usually leads to design failure, if

weight is not balanced the structure will bend towards one of
the wheel making the other rotate in air. This problem
appears at the completion of the structure. Therefore proper
home work is required to avoid it. Batteries have got most of
the weight which you can adjust as per your requirements so
one way is to adjust the weight using batteries.
The design should be as light as possible.
Keep the Mechanism as simple as possible that will be easy to
control electronically.
Make use of minimum possible motors. To simplify the
controlling.
Pitman motors are the best motors for driving a robot. They
work good up to 48V and have a good speed and torque.
Geared motors provide necessary braking for stopping the
robot. But dont use the mechanical brakes they will result in
breakage of the shaft of the motor at higher speed.

11.Mechanism motors

You can use Power Window motor for mechanism at it is

comparatively slow in speed. It can lift heavy objects because of its
high torque. It has infinite stationary torque also which will be very
use full in holding the mechanism at a particular position. Because of
the infinite torque of power window motors you cannot manually
move the shaft of the motor and as you need to position your arm in
a default position before starting the robot. You need to place
contact switches in the mechanism (which are pressed only when
the arm is in default position), and verify if the mechanism is in its
default position before running the actual program. Also Power
window motors works on 12 V. so you need some separate motor
driver of 12 V for this motor (i.e. if your driving motors are working
on 48 volts you can not drive the power window with the same
voltage supply).

12. Wheels

Diameter of wheels should not be greater than 10cm to get

the maximum efficiency from your Pitman motors. Selection
of wheels should also be done carefully you can make your
own wheels with nylon but dont forget to use a rubber
hovering for them otherwise they will skid on the arena.
You can achieve the Omni drives using Mecanum wheels or
Omni Directional Wheels. But Mecanum and Omni wheels are
not available in Pakistan and are very expensive. You can get
an Omni Directional drives Using simple wheels by using a
stirring motor on each wheel which is able to rotate the
wheels along with their driving motors at 90o.
Proper slots for placing batteries and circuit boards and
sensor boards should be made to avoid miss handling of the
electronic circuitry.
This is probably the least important thing to be done earlier
but can only be done at initial phases; I mean you can only
give the desired looks in initial phases. Once you have
completed the robot then you are bound to make the body of
the robot as it has been by the end.

13. Omni Drives

14. Electronic Circuitry:

15. Looks

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OMNI WHEELS:
Omni wheels are of various types for eg. Meccanum wheels, rota caster wheels, etc. here we will explain
the phenomenon on which the mechanum wheels work. The rest of the wheels are left as an exercise.
Following are some of the pictures of Meccanum wheels.

Below is the picture of the force vectors of the omni wheels when the robot is moving in the forward
direction.

As you can see the wheels are manufactured so the they are exerting force in two directions i.e. x and y
components of the force. Also in this cas all the x components are cancelling each other and results in
the movement in only y-direction. Hence we can obtain movements in various directions by acctuating
motors of each wheel in the following sequence.

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Hence using omni wheels you can drive your wheel in All directions i.e. forward, reverse, right side left
side rotate colock wise, rotate counter clockwise, turn right, turn left.
You can witness these movies clicking here.
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGZBtZbZ714
And here is my favourite NERC robot ever. The winner of NERC 2010.
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQhZlsrFN6M

Mechanisms: There are various kinds of mechanism can be used for various purposes. Choosing
appropriate Mechanism for the robot is the most important task in making a mechanical design.
Following are the videos and descriptions of some robotic mechanisms:

1. Crank Slider Mechanism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnASJHtbGB0&feature=related
2. Differential
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBLE0_Sjqw4&feature=related
3. Use it for precise angular movements:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2atiOFA-qnQ&feature=player_embedded
4. GENEVA MECHANISM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-JvQ4pMB_0&feature=related
5. 3D Joint -Simple Mechanism Autodesk Inventor 2010:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0VBO13XTGM&NR=1
6. Gear system that changes speed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgiiGFp0MKY&feature=related
7. Gear system that changes direction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aobPgGzB-U&feature=related
8. Hexapodator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgSSFjCD050&NR=1