Overview
The rover was designed to initially follow a winding black line on the ground and then autonomously locate and pick up an object once the line ended while staying under a budget of $330. I designed the claw and camera mount to allow the rover to identify and grab objects, in this case a red plastic cup.
Rover Path
Design Goals
Initial Design
The original claw design was horizontal, parallel to the ground. However, this would result in the cup scraping the ground once grasped and interfering with the rover’s mobility. The shape of the claws also wasn’t ideal as the rover had to be perfectly aligned to properly grasp the cup.
Initial horizontal claw
Claw arm prototype
Final Design
The final claw design was angled upwards to lift the cup off the ground as the claw closed,
allowing unimpeded movement. The claw arms were redesigned to allow more leeway when picking
up the cup and were tilted inwards at the ends to prevent the cup from slipping out of them.
Angled Claw Design
The camera mounting includes holes to screw the camera and servo in place and attach the claw arms as well.
To identify the cup, I configured the camera to recognize the color red. Once it saw red,
the rover would turn to keep the red object in the center of its view and move towards it.
When most of the screen was red, the rover would slowly move forward with the claw open. The
claw would close when the screen was nearly black and the rover would continue straight for
a few feet and release the cup.
Camera configured to recognize the color red (called signature 1)
The width and height of the viewport are the first two numbers in black. The width of the color signature is marked in red while its height is in blue
Finished Assembly
Isometric View
Bottom View