Mechanical Design Theory Semester Project: Ground Robots

Ground robot design and realization was a semester project of Mechanical Design Theory. Students were asked to build their own robots (no wheels allowed) to pass 3 predetermined stages as shown in Fig. 1. Stage A was a rectangular tunnel, stage B was a little hill, and stage C was a pair of cylindrical rods. Weight, successful rounds, total mileage, and time consumed were all performance indices taken into scoring.

Fig. 1 Racing field of ground robots

Design and Realization of a Long-Stroke Displacement Sensor Using Hall Elements

In this work magnetically sensitive electronic components called Hall elements were used to realize a long-stroke displacement sensor (see Fig. 1). Output voltage of Hall elements are induced by magnetic fields, and hence are sensitive to the proximity of ferromagnetic objects like magnets. By creating flux change in the magnetic circuit (see Fig. 2), induced voltage can be read out and used to calculate the actuated displacement.

Fig. 1 Illustration of a displacement sensor         Fig. 2 Possible magnetic flux change design