ME 2110 Robot

Every undergraduate mechanical engineering student at Georgia Tech has to take ME 2110, a semester-long design course that ends with a competition in the foyer of the manufacturing building. Teams are given a specific task which changes from semester to semester, and a limited set of mechanical components to build a robot with. During the competition, a bracket system pits teams against each other to see which teams can perform the tasks the best. 

On my team, I was responsible for the LabVIEW code that ran the entire robot, the design of the front end effector, and a lion's share of the reports due to the professor on the robot. Of course, I was able to help greatly in other aspects of the robot, like in the woodworking and overall design. It was fun to see the designs I had in my head turn into a real, working contraption that lead the team to a top 10 finish overall in the competition.

Crucial to staying in the competition (and sane) during this course was priority management and task delegation. With every team member in various demanding classes, working together to build the robot in a limited time becomes very difficult. I learned a lot about working with a team and how priorities and tasks can change rapidly. On a more technical side, this was a great introduction to LabVIEW and mechatronics.

(Above) Frontside end effector of robot

(Left) Initial state of robot, ready to start round

(Right) Final deployed state of robot