Integration of FIRST and PLTW

1
Integration of FIRST and PLTW

• John Wise
• Lee Smalley
• Andy Newell

2
Project Lead the Way

• Five engineering classes which teaches the
  fundamental ideas behind engineering
• Its goal is to better prepare students for
  college curriculum
• It gives students experience and knowledge in the
  field of engineering
• Students can earn college credit to RIT and USC
  for all the classes

3
Engineering Design and Development

• In the final culminating course of the PLTW
  program
• Students are given the challenge of solving an
  engineering problem. Basically inventing or
  bettering a product or process
• Our group used the robots tetra manipulator as
  our product to design

4
Our Place

• With this new problem to be solved, we saw an
  opportunity to take on our own sub-team and
  design and develop the manipulator for the robot.
  Prior to the formation of our group, the team had
  elected to use a spear to lift and lower the
  tetra. We saw this solution to be simple but
  lacked consistency and durability.

5
Brainstorming
We compiled a list of 46 ideas which could
possibly be used in our lift-arm mechanism.
These included

• Servo-motor gripper
• Grappling hook
• Forked spear
• Pneumatic claw devise
• Hook with spring

• Spear
• Retractable Hooks
• Suction device
• Lead screw claw
• Many more

6
Five Main Ideas

• Magnetic Fork
• Spear Hook
• Two Point Base Grabber
• Lead Screw Claw with Guiding Shield
• Weight Sensitive Spear Hook

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Our Proposed Solution

• We interviewed many engineers and students on the
  team and with their input we decided to design
  and construct the weight sensitive spear so that
  when the weight of the tetra was on the arm an
  end piece would flip up and keep the tetra from
  falling off. We then began to design by building
  and testing prototypes.

8
First Prototype
With our first prototype we discovered we were
able to accomplish what we needed to do. It
still needed a lot of work.
9
Redesign and Sketches
We rethought our design and came up with a new
idea which would be smoother and more consistent.
10
Our Design
This new prototype worked exactly as we needed it
to!
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We Still had a Problem

• Our arm must be able to fold inside the robot
  while still fitting to the robots size
  constraints.
• We designed plates with a built in axle to allow
  the arm to fold up.

12
Testing The Manipulator

• After we put the arm on the robot it was shipped
  to the University of Central Florida where it was
  ready for competition.
• It performed excellently!
• Match 5
• Match 10
• Match 18

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Thank you for your time!