Author: bohanhua

Followed the finalized implementation plan to sort out the basic components we need. For example, in order to construct the table, we decided to purchase 12 pieces 600mm Aluminum Extrusion European Standard Anodized Linear Rail from Amazon. This rails will serve as the basic frame of our system. Apart from the rails, we together decided to purchase 3 NEMA17  motors,  2 stepper motor driver, long belts, and rail set that magnetic platform movement in x,y,z directions.

At the same time, I work together with teammates to look into the detailed design layout of our system. Because our system contains a lot of components, we need detailed layout design, especially for the charging pads. Because each charging pad is responsible for 1/4 section of the table, we will have wires connected to them from the four corners of the table. In this way, the charging pads will not affect each others’ motion and their wires will not twist with each other. We also did some research regarding how to place our Jetson Nano as well as wires that control the gantry system, making sure the wires will not affect our detection and motion system. Test and research on the camera will be further tested in the future.

Overall, my progress in on schedule. We confirmed a lot of quantitative details regarding our mechanical, electrical and software design this week. Next week we will first double check our component list with Nathan, our TA, and submit first round of components by Wednesday. We have a detailed list with components name and corresponding links. I believe each of us work well and collaborate well.

Next week, we will begin to gather components. Apart from the components we will purchase, some other components can be directly obtained from ECE department such as the Nvidia Jetson nano, camera, etc. We are still looking into the camera type we want. At the same time, the wires, LEDs, transparent acrylic board can be directly find in Techspark. We will begin some basic testing after some important components arrive as soon as possible.

Personal Work this week:

1. Work on the design presentation, responsible for use case, quantitative design requirements, and solution approach parts.
2. Proposed the idea of using armed robot (R robot, single arm) that could rotate. The charging station could then move forward and backward on the arm and finally reach desired charging position. In this condition, the wires and be placed inside the arm, successfully eliminate the original concern regarding the cubic robot’s (our original design) motion affected be charging wire. However, we think the limited area the end effector could reach and the precision issue caused by the arm robot will make our job extremely difficult. So we moved on.
3. Meetings with teammates to review the design of our system. We went through in detail regarding our original design, which contains four cubic robots operating on the second layer of the system with each robot hold a charging pad (the charging pad is on top of the robot). However, one important fact that need to be taken into account is the way the robot and the charging pad is charged. Wireless charging can’t ensure constant power supply to the robot system; as for wired charging, the robot will drag the wire during the movement. In this condition, there will be great difficulty to prevent the wire from affecting the robot’s motion. Therefore, we worked together and decided to modify the design. In our new approach, between the second layer and the third layer will be a xy-axis motion system accomplished by belt (also consider linear motors, currently researching on some cheap options). as for the second layer, there will be four charging pads. The motion system (gantry) will use magnetic field to move the charging pad around. In that way we don’t need to worry about wire affecting the motion of the robot.
4. Work on the component list. While some parts of the system can be directly produced using 3D printing, some other parts such as the layer, which will be either glass or transparent plastic, will be bought online. I have completed part of the component list and will continue to work on it.  We plan to use Nvidia Jetson nano instead of Raspberry Pi. Also, we are considering to build our own charging pad instead of directly purchase existing ones by creating magnetic field between the electronic devices and the charging station.  Qi-certified contract is being studied at the same time.
5.  More details regarding the newest version of our design is included in team status report.

Overall, my progress in on schedule. Because we have finalized our design plan and begin to work on our component lists, we believe we are on the right track.

The next week, I will work together with my teammates for the component list. Because we have finalized our design, we are searching for corresponding components that matches with our design. At the same time,  I will work together with Steven to figure out the mechanical design of our system. Because now the second layer only contains the charging stations, the distance between layers will be modified. Also, we will continue to work on the presentation together to ensure our presentation can successfully illustrate and deliver our ideas.

During Wednesday, we presented our idea and proposal to the whole class to demonstrate our project: AutoChargerX. As the presenter, I carefully practiced to ensure that my presentation will be clear, insightful and easy to understand. At the same time, I dig into some specific design part of our project to make sure I can answer questions raised by professors, TAs, and other students.

Because the presentation is divided into many separate parts, we my teammates and I prepare for the presentation, we first divided the work between us thus each of us were responsible for several parts. After everybody finish his work, we then combined our work together.

My parts include use case introduction, use case requirements, part of technical challenges and the MVP definitions. I searched online for a variety of resources and listed some common problems for today’s charging systems. I pointed out that an automated wireless charging system will greatly help people with their everyday life because a home based wireless charging table can offer then convenience and high efficiency.

I also communicated with my teammates and drew out the brief design layout of our table system as shown below:

The three layered table system contains the surface, robot operating platform and the camera hub. The robot will hold the charging pads, which are on top of the robots and pair with the electronic devices on the surface of the table. The camera on the third layer will monitor the whole system and send feedbacks to control software, robots, and other devices in the system.

For MVP, I discussed from several viewpoints: table system, wireless charging module, automated device detection and alignment, robot motion plan, and feedback control software. In MVP, the numerical requirements are not as strict as those we mentioned for our final target because we want to make everything work first then try to reach higher efficiency.

Next week, we will further discuss our design with the professors and listen to their advice.