Chaungus

Inspiration

Rovers often need to navigate in unpredictable environments, so being able to shrink when needed to could be very helpful.

What it does

This rover aims to use environmental data to modify its width accordingly, while maintaining a stable chassis for housing electronic components and carrying other tools that may assist in its mission. It accomplishes the width-changing using wheels that can rotate to move perpendicularly from the chassis and using a linear slider. There are two sets of motors (4 motors in total). The first set is used to physically move the rover across the ground. The second set sits on top of the first set, so that when the second set turns, the first set changes its orientation. There are two positions for the first set of motors. One is parallel to the chassis. In this orientation, the motors allow the rover to move forward and backwards. The second orientation makes the wheels perpendicular to the chassis. In this orientation, turning the motors allows the car to widen or shrink.

How we built it

The chassis mainly consists of 80/20 beams. Stepper motors (second set) are attached to the frame, and DC motors are attached to the stepper motors (first set). Ultrasonic distance sensors are mounted at the front of the rover to detect the available space in front of the rover.

Challenges we ran into

1. It was difficult to attach the stepper motor to the DC motor because there were no compatible shaft collars. To fix this, we CADed and 3D printed connectors
2. It was difficult to set up raspberry pi because there wasn't a reliable public network, but that problem was solved using an Ethernet cable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to come up with valid and plausible designs for this in a short amount of time.

What we learned

[TODO]

What's next for Chaungus

1. complete the physical assembly
2. scale it to be smaller (80/20s tend to be hefty)
3. use Lidar for faster environment sensing

Built With

• grove
• python
• raspberry-pi