Working with a team of engineers to design and build an autonomous vehicle to transport golf balls across a specified course. As the industrial designer, my task was to design the vehicle specifically for the functions and operations which were required to traverse the competition course.

 

The vehicle used an open sourced code, utilising sensors and specific design features of the vehicle to find, extract and relocate the specified payload.

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Extended Description:

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"The objective is to design, build and prove a prototype ground based system in a laboratory environment that serves to extract, transport and relocate a payload over a defined terrain." You can read the full competition brief here.

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The Warman competition involved a team of 4 engineers and 1 industrial designer (myself). We aimed to complete the Warman challenge course using both open-source and closed source coding, rather than just a pre-programmed code which can be influenced by battery charge deeming it unreliable.

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The table consisted of 6 golf balls, each placed at different heights, around 2 obstacles (walls). Using an infrared sensor on the front of the vehicle, the message would be sent to the microcontroller to tell the vehicle to stop when it reached the first obstacle. Once here the vehicle would pick up the golf balls, then make its way to the other side of the table using the combination of prompts influenced by the infrared sensor triggering.

 

Once all the balls had been picked up and stored, the vehicle would then make its way to the rear of the table where the back door would open and the balls would be released into a hole. 

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The base of the vehicle was laser cut from 5mm thick acrylic. The vehicle consisted of 2 servo motors, operating the front scoop and rear door. There were also two DC motors for driving the vehicle, and an Arduino Leonardo was used as a microcontroller. The vehicle met all required specifications, include a volume constraint of 400mm3.