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Final EcoGolfer Robot
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Impact of Lost Balls
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EcoGolfer Overview
Inspiration: We were inspired to create this robot as the day prior, a tornado swept through our town causing high winds, even on the areas of town not directly hit. Living next to a golf course, we noticed that this spread the range balls far outside the driving range region, falling in areas too small for a range picker to retrieve. We then learned about the harmful effects that golf-balls can have on the environment and decided to create a robot to autonomously retrieve these golf-balls.
What it does: The Eco Golfer is designed to autonomously pick up golf balls on a variety of different terrains/slopes. The code is computer-generated from a script we programmed and the software was designed to be as easy to use as possible for people tailoring the auto for their area.
How we built it: We used the REV Robotics ecosystem to handle our processing and networking, and used a combination of REV and GoBuilda hardware to create the robot. We first created a drive train with all-terrain wheels, then experimented with different intake designs until we decided upon a gravity-fed flywheel system.
Challenges we ran into: The biggest challenge we ran into was the intake design. We wanted to be able to pick up balls from many slope angles, so we considered many different ideas involving linear slides and one-way doors. We eventually landed on our gravity-fed system, but that also did not come easy as if it is entirely held by gravity, the weight of the motors and wheels was too much for the golf-ball to roll under. This is why we created a gravity fed rotation point, but included a stop to ensure the wheels do not touch the ground and prevent balls from being collected.
Accomplishments that we're proud of: We are most proud of our autonomous program and the generator for customizing the script. We are also very proud of our intake as we finally found the sweet spot for picking up balls with high efficiency. And we are of course very proud of completing our first hackathon! We had a ton of fun and will definitely be doing more.
What we learned: We learned a lot about the mechanical engineering side of robotics through our intake iterations. We also learned many software techniques such as turning until a gyro-sensor reads a certain degree for reliability. Finally, we learned about the importance of time management. We often would find ourselves spending a lot of time on smaller tasks that could wait for later. This led to a crunch to finish software just before the deadline.
What's next for EcoGolfer: Although we are proud of our project, there are many things we can improve on. One would be an odometry/dead wheel for localization during our autonomous, as well as adapting our robot to be able to safely navigate wet environments without risk of damage.
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