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| Project Description: | The students on this project were presented with the challenge
of designing and building something to break ground for the new engineering
lab building. The idea was to come up with a different way of breaking
ground that would demonstrate some of the abilities of the Grand Valley
State Engineering students. The actual method of breaking ground
was to be left to the students' imagination and abilities.
After several different ideas had been proposed and debated, it was finally decided that an apparatus would be built that could be controlled by a virtual reality Nintendo Power Glove. The Power Glove was being used in a separate project by Mike Karlesky, and he decided that it could be integrated without too much difficulty into the groundbreaking project. It was decided that the mechanical structure should be modeled much like a back hoe in order to make it practical for breaking ground. |
| Mechanical Component: | The mechanical apparatus as designed by the mechanical engineers on the team is shown as a CAD solid model below in Figure 1 (note that the hydraulic system is not shown except for the cylinders). The entire mechanical structure, including all hydraulics, was designed, built, and painted in a period of two weeks by the two mechanical engineers on the team. Fabrication and assembly of the components was done inside the machine shop at Grand Valley's Eberhard Center. The machine shop is on the 7th floor, which presented the design constraint that the apparatus had to fit inside the elevators so that it could be transported from the 7th floor to the groundbreaking location. The machine was painted in Bryan Kuieck's garage. |
| Controls Component: | The controls consist of a PC running custom software, a Nintendo Power Glove, a Basic Stamp controller, several high accuracy potentiometers, several solid state relays, and solenoid actuated hydraulic valves. The PC software reads position data from the glove over a serial port and translates it into joint angles to be sent to the robot. The basic stamp controller receives these joint angles from another serial port on the PC and activates appropriate relays (corresponding with particular joint motions) which in turn activate the hydraulic valves. Once a particular piece of the robot reaches its intended destination, the basic stamp controller stops that motion. If a motion lasts too long, limit switches prevent the robot from traveling too far. Additionally, a time-out occurring within the program of the basic stamp stops all motions and reset the controller. |
| Software Component: | The control software consists of 4 modules. The glove server
(GloveServer.java) and stamp server (StampServer.java) modules handle the
serial communication with the power glove and basic stamp respectively.
The master control module (gbControl.java) pipes the data from the glove
through a set of mathematical translations (Translations.java) on through
to the basic stamp controller. The basic stamp runs the fourth module to
control the robot's motions.
In essence, the x, y, z, and finger data of the glove is translated into joint angles which the basic stamp on the robot uses to activate the hydraulic cylinders until the joint angles are reached. |
| Electrical Component: | The electrical component consists of both AC and DC devices. The control circuitry including the Basic Stamp, manual override pendant, joint angle potentiometers, and solid state relays is all 5V DC. The solenoid relays are operated by 110V AC. The hydraulic pumps operate at 208 V AC single phase. |
| Special Thanks: | The team would like to thank Dr. Jack, who came up with
the idea for the project in the first place, and who contributed his ideas
and knowledge throughout the project. Thanks also to Bob Bero, who
patiently offered his help, especially in the purchasing of materials for
the project.
And of course, we would like to thank Fred M. Keller, as well as the other contributors whose generous donations have made it possible to build a much needed Engineering Lab building for the students of the Padnos School of Engineering. |