Gadget

May-August 2010

Gadget is an fully autonomous robot designed to follow an ordinary black tape on a white surface at high speed. It uses eight QRD 1114 brightness sensors to track the position of the tape. All computation is done by a UBC TINAH board featuring an ATMega 128 processor.

Gadget was designed and fabricated from scratch and features many interesting mechanical design choices to improve its performance. The chassis is monocoque sheet steel cut using a waterjet machine. The steering is an Ackermann geometry steering that is controlled by a servo motor; the two rear wheels are driven by a custom made differential gear that is belt-driven by two motors. Gadget also has an infrared rangefinder in the front to detect obstacles, which it may avoid.

The robot was completed by a team of four: Adrien Emery, Billy Fung, Russell Vanderhout, and myself. The project was for the ENPH 253 (Introduction to Instrument Design) course work and Gadget competed in the 10th Annual Engineering Physics Roborace. Learn more about Gadget »