Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
32 Air Hockey Playing Robot
 Matthew Feder
Micah Wehler
Rohan Kapur
 Lukas Dumasius design_document1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
# Air Hockey Playing Robot

Team Members:
- Rohan Kapur (rohan21)
- Micah Wehler (mwehler2)
- Matthew Feder (msfeder2)

# Problem

Air hockey requires players to track and react to a fast moving object in real time, making it a challenging robotics problem. To solve this, we aim to build a robotic opponent which can autonomously move a paddle to defend and return shots against a human on a mini air hockey table.

# Solution

Our design will use an overhead camera to track the position of the puck in real time, a raspberry pi for image processing and computation, and a paddle mounted on a H-bot belted mechanism to move. This involves two main subsystems, perception and actuation.

# Solution Components

## Subsystem 1: Perception

This subsystem will track the position of the puck in real time and determine the ideal intercept location. It will use an overhead mounted Raspberry Pi Camera Module, which will be recording at 720p 120fps. These frames will then be parsed by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, which will be integrated into our custom PCB. The Raspberry Pi will use a color thresholding algorithm to determine the location of the puck, and track it across frames to determine velocity and direction. This information will then be parsed by a simple physics model to determine the ideal intercept location which requires the paddle to move the minimum distance.

## Subsystem 2: Actuation

This subsystem is responsible for moving the paddle to the intercept location. It will use two NEMA 17 stepper motors, driven by TMC5160A motor drivers in our PCB, and controlled using SPI by the Compute Module. The stepper motors will drive a linear belt along a H-Bot mechanism to give the paddle two degrees of freedom while keeping both the motors stationary. This allows for rapid acceleration with fewer moving parts.

# Criterion For Success

The project should be able to contact at least 75% of incoming straight shots and 50% of the single bounce shots where the puck is traveling at less than 4 m/s.

Cypress Robot Kit

Todd Nguyen, Byung Joo Park, Alvin Wu

Cypress Robot Kit

Featured Project

Cypress is looking to develop a robotic kit with the purpose of interesting the maker community in the PSOC and its potential. We will be developing a shield that will attach to a PSoC board that will interface to our motors and sensors. To make the shield, we will design our own PCB that will mount on the PSoC directly. The end product will be a remote controlled rover-like robot (through bluetooth) with sensors to achieve line following and obstacle avoidance.

The modules that we will implement:

- Motor Control: H-bridge and PWM control

- Bluetooth Control: Serial communication with PSoC BLE Module, and phone application

- Line Following System: IR sensors

- Obstacle Avoidance System: Ultrasonic sensor

Cypress wishes to use as many off-the-shelf products as possible in order to achieve a “kit-able” design for hobbyists. Building the robot will be a plug-and-play experience so that users can focus on exploring the capabilities of the PSoC.

Our robot will offer three modes which can be toggled through the app: a line following mode, an obstacle-avoiding mode, and a manual-control mode. In the manual-control mode, one will be able to control the motors with the app. In autonomous modes, the robot will be controlled based off of the input from the sensors.