Proposal

Introduction

We chose to design the BB-8 drone from Star Wars because we believe that it will be more challenging to design and create than R2-D2. Our goal is to have a functioning BB-8 drone that moves, has working lights, and has an arm that projects out from the body. Some core learning objectives that will be learned are how to brainstorm with teammates, design an animatronic from scratch, and how to present our final project in front of a professional audience. There are many tasks that will need to be completed for our design project such as; building moving components that sit on a moving base, coding an Arduino, creating the frame and bodywork over the mechanical components, and making our BB-8 look appealing. Building a functioning BB-8 will not be an easy task. It will come along with a few challenges that our team needs to overcome in order to complete our robot. A couple challenges that we are aware of is creating a spherical frame and bodywork for our robot, learning to code Arduino as the project develops and creating an opening/closing compartment for an arm located inside the body of the robot. We hope by the end of the class, we will have created a functioning BB-8 drone that matches or exceeds all of our expectations.

Deliverables

For BB-8 we have to come up with a solution to a spherical shell which will encompass the motors, Arduino board, ejectable arm, and hidden wheels. We plan on making a prototype in AutoDesk CAD/Fusion which we will then apply to real life. BB-8 will be made of corrugated boards that are pieced together to give off the look of a sphere. For an ejectable arm we plan on applying a basic automata snail gear which allows the arm to gimmick ejecting out and popping back in as it glides along the edge.

Technical Activities

Coding the animatronic will be difficult since we have very little Arduino experience; learning the Arduino board, connecting wires for motors, basic programming will be a new challenge. We need to come up with a loop code that allows BB-8 to move around and eject its arm. That will encase a total of three motors: 2 for wheels that allow BB-8 to move around and a motor with a snail gear for the arm.

3.1 spherical shell

Creating a spherical shell similar to bb-8’s that allows for motors and all accessories to be placed inside properly and effectively without being detrimental to the aesthetic of bb-8.

3.2 ejectable arm

BB-8 has an ejectable hand from his body. For this we plan on using a basic snail gear with an arm that is pushed out as the gear turns and then drops back down after a full rotation giving the illusion of the arm ejecting out and popping back in. This can easily be cut out of wood or 3d printed.

3.3 hidden wheels

Unlike the actual BB-8 ours will have actual wheels at the bottom that allows it to roam around. By strategically placing the wheels at the bottom of the spherical shell we should be able to give the illusion that it's spinning on just its body(like in the movie)

3.4 learning Arduino

Winter term we learned python, so most kids including all of us have little or no arduino experience. This will be a challenge to program what we want as we have to move along with the project while learning the code. Granted there are online youtube videos and other codes we can look at for help; it will still be a struggle.