Robotics Development Platform

A Senior Design Project by Michael Carr and Christina Welk

Welcome to our Robot’s homepage. This site is intended to make our work available to anyone and everyone interested in our progress. During our senior year, we rigorously applied the breadth and depth of our educations to this robotics project and, in doing so, have learned an immeasurable amount. Now, after the completion of the first iteration, we have seen our design's realization take shape and have fully entered the testing, validation, and revision phase.

My name is Michael Carr. I work as a mechanical engineer for Electroimpact, where I design and build aerospace tooling. I also occasionally work as a consultant for Coroware, where I design the robotic platforms they use to develop and demonstrate their systems integration software. In April of 2005 I earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science from Henry Cogswell College, graduating at the top of my class. In my spare time, what precious little there is, I enjoy sailing, martial arts, metalworking, and welding.

My partner is the lovely Christina Welk. She currently works as a software engineer for Implicit Networks, where she designs and impliments media management software. She also earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Cogswell in April of 2005, graduating Summa cum Laude. She was one of my very few academic rivals, and I was grateful to have her assistance with this ambitious project. She even managed to balance her academic excelence in her college years with a rigerous internship at Portal Player.

To date, we have devoted over 1500 hours to this project and have generated a tremendous amount of material documenting our progress. Included below are links to a number of gallery pages, which are still being updated. As we progress, we'll be snapping pictures of anything we deem picture-worthy and posting them here. Also below are the documents that make up our final report, which were submitted for evaluation at the conclusion of each phase of Senior Design Project, as well as the Microsoft Powerpoint files used during our presentations. If you have any questions or comments on any of the materials presented here, please contact me at mike@eigenspace.net.

Galleries

Design Sketches A lot of design sketches. Mostly scribbles on graph paper that show my thought process. 01.15.2005
Solid Models The design sketches with enough promise went on to become solid models. Countless hours of SolidWorks time shown here. 01.15.2005
Finite Element Analysis The solid models with enough promise went on for analysis. Displacement and stress distributions courtesy of ANSYS. 01.15.2005
Shop and Tools Some pictures of the tools and equipment that I will be using in the manufacture of this robot. 04.24.2006
Parts Pictures of the parts, taken as I get each shipment. Come see what a 350-pound robot looks like before anyone puts it together. 07.03.2006
Build Galleries Manufacturing pictures. My progress in making the parts from the previous section look like the robot they were destined to be. 07.03.2006

Other Stuff

Tests Movies and other recounts of the tests we're performing on the finished robot. Come see just what can go horribly wrong here. 09.24.2006
Local Code
Remote Code
Full software documentation for both the local and remote computer systems. 03.26.2005
Design Documents The final documents, submitted for review at the conclusion of each term. These are what got graded. 05.12.2005

09.24.2006