Béda5 - a robot for RoboRAVE competition

Béda 5 is a robot, with which our team HaHaHa Robotics (www.hahaharobotics.tk) has won the Czech national round of the international RoboRAVE 2016 Junior competition – the category of Ball transport with automatic loading. Béda 5 is also our first robot we made with 3D printed parts printed at Prusa i3, which we got for the last Christmas.

Function:

  The robot follows a black line, detects a crossroad, pushes the dosing tower button for collecting balls, turns around and rides towards the target box. It stops in front of the target box, centers itself, opens its collector lid and empties the balls to the box. If the robot has a spare time until the 3-minute limit, it makes another round, otherwise it returns back to the start.

The robot uses DC motors salvaged from HP Photosmart 1215, mechanical parts incl. gears and wheels printed at a 3D printer, control system based on own PCB with PIC16F1789, bidirectional motor driver L298N, LCD display 16x2, RGB LED with WS2811 driver, 6 reflective sensors QRD1114 for black line following and wheel encoding, two front buttons, IR distance sensor Sharp GP2, servo-motor TG9z for ball collector opening, powered by a battery pack with 4 Li-ion accumulators 2.2 Ah charged using a chip MCP73831. 

Mechanical parts: 

-       front wheel: ping – pong ball in a holder, 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, a model taken from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:636967  

-       back wheels: Ø156 mm 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, a modified parametric model from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:21486 

-       tires of the back wheels: a circular profile EPDM 8 mm 

-       chassis: polycarbonate sheet 120 × 250 mm from a HP DeskJet printer  

-       2×gearbox 25:1, 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, a modified parametric model from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3575  

-       holder of reflective sensors:  3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, own design (see the SketchUp model below) 

-       buttons and IR distance sensor Sharp GP2 holder: 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, own design (see the SketchUp model below) 

-       the control board case with a lid: 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, own design (see the SketchUp model below) 

-       the battery pack box: 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA,  own design (see the SketchUp model below) 

-       the ball collector: 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, own design (see the SketchUp model below) 

-       a holder for the ball colector: 3D printed at PRUSA i3, material PLA, own design (see the SketchUp model below) 

Electrical parts:

-        MCU: PIC16F1789  

-       MCU inputs:

·         front button PCB5-EC-4-5 (2 pcs connected in parallel) for pushing button of the dosing tower

·         5×reflective sensor QRD1114 for the black line following

·         1×reflective sensor QRD1114 as the wheel encoder

·         IR distance sensor Sharp GP2Y0A41SK0F (4 – 30 cm) for box detection (finally, the front buttons were used instead as the sensor was overshined by the direct sun).

·         reserve 4 DI/DO

-       MCU outputs:

·         alphanumeric LCD display 16x2 

·         bidirectional motor driver L298N (2×2 A)

·         RGB LED with a driver WS2811 for signalization

·         servomotor 9g TG9z for the ball collector opening

·         speaker: 8 Ω/0,5 W (not used in this program)

-       Motors: 2 DC motors C6003 salvaged from HP Photosmart 1215 printer 

-       Battery pack: 4×Li-ion acumulators 3.6 V/2.2 Ah, separately charged via MCP73831 chips 

-       PCB: universal line PCB e=0.1“ 

Scheme – control board (better readable schemes are attached as pdf)

 Table of components – Control board:

  Scheme – reflective sensors:

Table of components – Reflective sensors:

Scheme – encoder:

Table of components – Encoder:

Scheme -  Battery pack:

Table of components – Battery Pack: 

3D models in SketchUp:

Photos of the robot:

Training models of the dosign tower and the target box:

Front buttons with IR distance sensor:

Collector of balls from the top:

Robot chassis- back part from below:

Robot chassis- front part:

Motors:

Immediately after the winning competition we dismantled the robot and made its update – Beda 6 for the Robotic Day in Prague for the Ketchup House contest (… and guess what, it has won again … the new input is coming soon …).