The Ping Pong Ball Project was a project during my ENGR 200 course during spring 2024. In this project we had to pick up and move no more than 2 ping pong balls at a time from a pit in the center of a course, and then bring the ping pong balls back to a collection spot at the other end of the course. During the project me and my partner had to design a robot and a system to collect and move the ping pong balls, during the testing phase of this project we were not allowed to touch the robot or ping pong balls and could only move the robot via a control system of our design.
The main design of this robot was a large C-Channel that went down the center of the robot that could scoop up ping pong balls, and then move them to the collection area by dumping the balls out the other end of the C-Channel.
Another idea we had during this project, was a claw system that could pick up the ping pong balls and move them, but ruled this idea due to it having to many movements that we could not account for with the limited number of motors we had.
One of the big problems we faced during the test was the fact that the back half of the collection device was to heavy for the motors move on their own, so we added a tension line and torqued the motor to allow the arm control motor to pull the front of the arm down at a controlled rate.
During our final test, the robot faced trouble getting the ping pong balls over the lip of the scoop due to the fact that it could not get a steep enough angle to get up under the ping pong balls. We did managed to collect 2 ping pong balls, one bounced out of the collection try while one stayed.
Figure 1. Side view of the Robot, and the Large C-Channel collection device
Figure 2. Close up of the Robot, and the collection device
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