BB-8 ENGR Design Project

Project Overview

BB-8 making its way

In the freshmen design project, we will be applying the engineering design process to create an animatronic machine. Our goal is to create a replication of BB-8 that can move around and extend its arm. The motivation was that Star Wars is a popular series and the robots fit perfectly for this. The plan is to have a working BB-8 that uses fixed core rather than a rotating on that is shown in the movie. We also plan to include an arm that comes out of the body and retracts as well as LED lights to synchronize with movements. We expect to have some problems with learning Arduino code as the group is relatively new to programming and Arduino in general. Creating the physical design will raise some concerns, as it can be difficult (or time consuming) to create device a perfect sphere. There will be somewhat of a learning curve to the project, learning how to perform different tasks within a group setting, and with the current situation with COVID-19, we will be learning how to solve these problems and tasks remotely via Zoom meetings; however, we hope that we can produce a final product that is in line with what we set out to do.