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Final-year project: Appliance transport / stairs climbing robot

Project Title

Appliance transport / stairs climbing robot

Programme / year

TU821/4

Objective

Design, build and test a robot for safely moving heavy loads such as household appliances in indoor environments.

Project Description

Many solutions exist for moving heavy loads in spacious indoor environments such as warehouses or large retail premises (e.g. forklifts, pallet jacks). However, most of these solutions are not suitable for more tightly constrained indoor environments such as private homes. The objective of this project is to design, build and test a compact robot for safely moving heavy loads such as household appliances in more tightly constrained indoor environments. Ideally, the robot's abilities should include carrying a payload up and down stairs, along corridors and/or around tight corners. The robot will operate under human control / supervision. The prototype will be a scale model of the full-size robot and testing will be carried out using a custom-built model environment that includes indicative challenges (e.g. stairs), that may be constructed using laser-cut plywood.

Key Outcomes

• Research existing material-handling solutions (manual, automated or robotic) for moving heavy loads in constrained indoor environments.
• Design and construct a model environment for robot testing (e.g. a scale model of a stairs and a corridor with a tight corner), as well as one or more example payloads.
• Design, build and test a prototype robot that can move an example payload through the test environment under human control.
• Produce a compelling demonstration of the functioning prototype robot for the final project assessment.

Additional project information

The implementation of the prototype robot will require a combination of different skills:

• Design of physical laser-cut parts, e.g. using Inkscape.
• Design of an electrically actuated mechanism to lift and move the payload.
• Implementation of power electronics to control the electrical actuators (motors).
• Development of embedded software (e.g. Arduino) to control the robot.
• Design and implementation of a human-machine interface to control the robot.

Is a particular major required?

No major option is required for this project.