Group 18-01 Ball Balancing Robot: (from left to right) George Risi, Dan Mariano, Kevin Simone, Jeffrey Vo, and Tyler Ney-Smith after the final presentation.

Poster made for the presentation after working on the project for 10 weeks.

This is the poster we created for the project at the end of the two weeks. 

Week 10 Update

This week the final assembly was completed. The bushings were screwed onto the motor shafts. The wheels were pressed onto the bushings. The microcontroller was mounted on the top plate via acrylic brackets. A better suited ball was chosen for a better frictional surface. 

New ball with the robot on top.

Microcontroller mounted on the top plate

 Side view of the Microcontroller mounting brackets

 Top view of the Microcontroller mounting brackets

Weekly update: Week 9

We completed a new motor mount without a crack. The bends look a lot more precise in this one than the last one.

Newest mount with motors

The group also lathed the bushings out of billet aluminum. Now they need to be drilled to the proper size on the inside and another hole drilled on the side and tapped to hold the set screw. The set screw will be used to hold the busing/wheel to the shaft.

Lathed bushings

Close up view

Weekly update: Week 8

Finished line bending the motor mount.

Bracket with the bottom plate

Bracket with both plates and motors

Robot resting on ball without wheels. With wheels on, the plexiglass will not contact the ball.

The group had some trouble with a corner cracking. Decided to start making a new one with the other plexiglass cut out we had.

This is a detail of the crack in the motor mount. It was caused by an uneven tightening of the screws that hold the motor to the mount.

Weekly Update: Week 7

Machined thicker, wider acrylic. thickness = .118 " and width = 39 mm

This week: Machined with thicker plastic, worked on bushing for motor to wheel contact, started hot wire bending, microcontroller research

Total machining time for the laser cutter ( for top platform, bottom platform, and 2 brackets) = about 30 minutes


Machining Process Documented:

Main screen of CorelDraw(laser cutting software) and Top Platform cutting

Cutting circles out of the main brackets

Started working on bending the material into shape with the hot wire bender:

Upper platforms assembled:

Assembled platforms next to bocce ball for comparison:

Bending process in action: 

Closer view of bent corners:

Electronics Circuit

The group looked into how to provide power to the circuit. They found out that the Arduino UNO controller they had been considering using draws 7-12v. The motors draw 2.7v and the uno only outputs 5v. To run all three motors each one will have to be run through an A4988 stepper motor driver carrier, available from pololu. This device can receive logic voltage commands from the arduino but also receives voltage from the power supply to power the motors. It uses between 8 and 35v. We need three of them, one for each motor. The motors then get their power from the batteries, using the motor driver as an intermediary. The motor driver receives a logic voltage from the micro controller that regulates how much voltage to run to the motors.