Movement without Rotating Parts

The main goal of this project was designing and building a robot that could move around a figure-eight track as fast as possible, without crossing the track lines. The kicker --> no part on the robot could have any fully rotating part.

We were allowed to use no more than three dynamixel servo motors, one with continuous rotation configuration (allowing for 360 degree movement) and two U-Bar configuration (allowing for movement similar to an elbow joint).

The final robot design utilized the Sarrus linkage, and one way traction pads on the "foot" of the linkage. Reinforcing linkages were added to strengthen the movement. More information is in the media and in the file viewer. The robots were tested by doing different trials, straight line test, figure eight test ignoring the outside lines, and figure eight obeying both inside and outside lines. There were three different teams for this project, and our final design was second fastest, comparing 30.1 s in the straight line test to the other team's 20.5 s and 178.1 s. Our team was the only one that could finish the figure-eight loop without crossing the lines.