Frank the Differential Drive Robot

Recently I was given the opportunity to work with someone with professional experience in optimal robot pathing, so I thought I’d take the opportunity and go crazy. Meet Frank, the differential drive robot:

A render of Frank

Frank is going to allow me to test a path finding program I want to make in the next few months. Frank is finished from a mechanical and electrical standpoint, but his programming is yet to be implemented. I’ll post a blog (and update this) when I get him moving. The goal is to create a path finding algorithm to apply to Frank to optimize time from point a to b. I will likely be using an alteration of the A* algorithm and Bezier spline interpolation. Stay tuned!!!

Electric Longboard

Getting around can be hard sometimes, especially when your bike is sort of falling apart and many years too old. Saw one of my friends with an electric longboard and decided I wanted one. After a lengthy design process and relatively quick build, it’s finished! Here is the picture of the finished board!

*Finished* Electric Longboard
I plan to replace this picture with something of higher quality in the future!

Battery Welder

Have you ever wondered how you’d power your various mobile devices? If you have, you’ve probably realized it’s Battery Time! While a large majority of people would have just bought something off the shelf (OTS), I decided that I wanted a learning opportunity. I learned how to make my own battery spot welder using an open source project I found online and had a lot of fun testing it. (It is easily capable of vaporizing nickel!)

This was a picture I took while I was testing the device for defects

Despite shipping taking nearly an entire semester, I would say the project went pretty smoothly. The only thing I think I may have to do down the line is increase the number of batteries being used from 2 to 3. It feels a tad “weak” but the welds are strong enough for what I’m doing. I have a few blogs detailing this project and what I’ve used it for here.

FRC Team 1902 Exploding Bacon’s 2019 Robot

My senior year of high school was an incredible experience to say the least. I was the design lead on FRC team 1902 which gave me an incredible opportunity to benefit the development of the robot. Given my position, I knew the more work I put in, the more I would get out.

The robot in a match as of FIRST Championship in Houston

We made several changes to the robot over the course of the 8 weeks before worlds, and I’m proud of the final product.

I plan on making several posts on the development process of the things I specifically worked on, but for now, here are some quick stats.

  • The robot in CAD has 1370 parts including fasteners
  • There were 5 revisions of the ball intake
  • There were 3-4 revisions of the hatch panel intake
  • We cut 25-30 lb of weight in the first two competitions
  • The robot made it to playoffs at each competition
  • We used several manufacturing methods that were new to us

Leading the build and design of this robot gave me many skills that I would not have otherwise, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity I was given by the team. For more robot stats, visit our 2019 blue alliance page.