ME 106 - Mechatronics

March 9, 2010

ME 106 Project Proposal

Group members: Jose Carlos Velasco Jared Renshaw Mathew Darby Gard Max Ratner (Group Leader) Rami Malaed

Proposal:
The idea that our group is thinking about doing is to design a claw game that is seen around any arcade, ones that someone can win a stuff teddy bear in it. However, we are going to make a candy claw game. The way that our group is going to approach it is to build the actual claw first and the prongs of the claw are going to powered by a worm gear that is meshed to 4 other gears that are going to connected to the links that are connected to the prongs of the claw, shown in the picture. Then we are going to have a tracking system on the claw that has a x and y placement with pin switches, as sensors, in order to prevent over steering over the tracks. The tracks are going to be belt operated in each individual axis. Then the input to the claw game is going to be a 4 switch joystick with a push button on top of it. However, we may make an old XBox controller as the input joystick. We are going to program the microcontroller to apply positive or negative voltage to the right motor turn the belts in the corresponding direction as to what switch is connected to the joystick. In addition, we are going to program the microcontroller to run through a sequence when the button is pushed on top of the controller. The sequence in the code is going to consist of opening the claw by applying a voltage to the worm gear, then drop the claw, wait for around a second then after the time it takes to travel to the candy, then close the claw by applying another voltage to the claw, and finally moving to home position, the drop hole of the candy, and release the candy. We have made some decision on what material the claw and the holding apparatus should be made of, but we have not made a definite decision.