ARC Robotics Competition
I joined five other students to design and build a 20 lb robot, about 0.6 by 0.6 m, for a competition focused on precise cube placement. I designed the two-degree-of-freedom wrist. It rolls continuously through 360 degrees on a slip ring and pitches 180 degrees, so the end effector has a full hemisphere to work in. I iterated the gear train to reduce backlash and increase stiffness, added on-axis encoding for control, and built in hardstops and active cooling to protect the motor during stall testing.
The parts were mine end to end. I drew them to GD&T, cut them on the waterjet, milled and tapped them against a fixture plate, pressed the bearings in on the lathe and mill, and assembled the wrist by hand. I topology-optimized the electronics mount in nTop. Beyond the wrist, the robot ran slip rings on the turret yaw and wrist roll for continuous rotation, three passive omni-wheels for odometry, and a suction end effector.
