ME 333 Suggested Final Projects
Students working on the projects listed below may begin their work right away, upon approval. Students wishing to propose their own project must write a proposal of approximately 3-5 pages, due in class Thurs Feb 7, with at least one drawing (hand drawing OK) showing the whole device, a paragraph or two discussing the overall function and goal of the project, as well as discussions of the sensors and actuators you will use, the computation, and the mechanical design. Although you do not have to have worked out all the details, the proposal should show that you've thought about how the whole project will work. It can be a fun whimsical project, or it can solve a practical problem. Your project should creatively use simple sensors and actuation, but your proposal should be beyond simply applying what we do in lab. Previous projects are a good indicator of what's possible.
Your final project cannot be a robot for DC.
Projects will be judged on functionality (does it do what it's supposed to do?), reliability (does it do it every time?), ambitiousness (is the problem challenging? did you contribute a new capability to the wiki?), and aesthetic appeal (is it packaged nicely? is it pleasing to watch or fun to interact with?).
Recommended Projects
Experiment in Granular Flows
(Client: Prof. Rich Lueptow.) You will build a device to support experiments studying how grains separate or mix under forcing. The device consists of a sphere partly filled with granular matter that is rotated about two orthogonal axes by independent motors under PIC control. The user sends the desired motion profile via the "serial" interface in Matlab, and the PIC interprets it and executes it. Upon successful completion, the PIC signals the Matlab program that the motion is complete. To get an idea of what the actuation might look like, check out the servosphere from ME 433 Advanced Mechatronics in 2005. The sphere must be releasable. Maximum speed of the sphere is 60 RPM, and its diameter is approximately 20 cm.
Piezo-controlled Vibratory Clock
You will build a horizontal circular platform that is actuated from underneath by three compliantly-attached piezoactuator stacks. The vibration of the platform causes an hour "hand" on top of the platform to slide around the circular platform, impelled by friction forces due to the vibration. If you bump the hand away, it slowly moves back to the correct hour. You may find other imaginative uses for your device. Check out this website to see more information on how this works and some videos of parts moving around a vibrated plate.
Light-gradient Detecting Mobile Robot
You will build a mobile robot with three tri-color light sensors. The purpose of this robot is to track moving colors projected by a ceiling-mounted LCD projector pointing downward. By calculating the color gradient, the robot can move to the region of maximum redness, blueness, or greenness, for example. It is a model of a robot attempting to find the source of an oil spill, or the center of a chemical plume.
Vibration Suppression
You will build an active vibration-suppression system. It will consist of a mass attached to a wall by a spring and moving on a linear slide, and attached on the other side to an ordinary audio speaker. You will mount an accelerometer on the mass, and, based on that signal, actuate the speaker to try to damp the mass's vibration as quickly as possible. Demonstration will include showing the accelerometer signal on an oscilloscope (or collected in Matlab) when control is off and when control is on. Another good challenge is to develop a controller that makes the mass move along an arbitrary periodic motion; your controller must "learn" to apply the right periodic control signal to make the mass follow the desired periodic motion. The desired and actual motion can be displayed on an oscilloscope or a Matlab program.
Wii-like Mouse Control
You will build a wireless hand-held device that uses accelerometers to sense the motion of the device and translates it into the motion of a cursor on a PC screen. The device could use a single 2-axis accelerometer, or you may have other ideas. One challenge is to translate the accelerometer signals into easily-controllable but dynamic motions of the cursor. (Not just simple tilt-sensing.) Should you have a dead-band where the cursor doesn't move at all if the acceleration doesn't exceed some threshold, similar to picking up a mechanical mouse and moving it back to the center of the mousepad? You will need plenty of time to work on user interface issues once the basic device is built. Success of the project in the final demo will be determined by how easily a new user can quickly and accurately control the mouse (e.g., to move to desired points on the screen).
You may have other ideas how to use it. Can you flip pages in a virtual book?
Two other possible challenges: Can you hack a wireless mouse so that you are actually using a mouse bluetooth wireless interface? Or, if you are simply interacting with a Matlab program with the "serial" routines, can you put a pager motor in the device to indicate when you are moving on a "rough patch" on the screen?
Programmable-Stiffness Joint
Muscles behave in part like variable-stiffness springs. There are also several muscles crossing most joints, providing a degree of redundancy. One way we can use this redundancy is to control the joint's position and stiffness simultaneously (without using high-bandwidth feedback control to achieve the desired stiffness, as is necessary with a typical robot joint). Or to control the joint torque and stiffness simultaneously. In this project you will create a single joint controlled by two nonlinear springs actuated by two independent motors to achieve simultaneous controllable endpoint stiffness and position, and demonstrate its controlled motion along desired trajectories.
