G
EORGIA
I
NSTITUTE OF
T
ECHNOLOGY
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
ME 2110 – Creative Decisions and Design
Fall 2016
Design Mini-Project
Service robotics is a trend that is expected to become critical
for technical developments
in terms of Industry 4.0, human-robot-cooperation and in general for manufacturing operations
of the future. An excellent example of where robotics is being
extremely successful in
production is in the automotive sector. In particular assembly operations for the car body require
significant programming efforts, continuous maintenance, and must have a “soft touch” for
sensitive parts. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and su
ppliers see a considerable
potential in supporting workers us
ing service-robots, especially at their preassembly- or
assembly-lines. Handling and tran
sferring presorted parts from
“supermarket cars” to the
workers, commissioning the carsets, shown in Figure 1, supporti
ng the workers with the actual
needed tools (
e.g.
, power screwdriver, fitting tools, etc…) might be an economica
l approach to a
human-robot-cooperation.
Your goal is to design a mechanical and/or electromechanical
3D-printable
“device”
(gripper) making industrial or s
ervice robots capable of suppor
ting workers at the assembly lines.
It is desired to generate new c
oncepts, such as that shown in Figure 2, beside the standard
technologies that have been employed for years by the robotic s
uppliers (based on mostly simple
technologies, using pressurized air and rigid mechanics) as shown in Figure 3. The parts or tools
to be handled are both stiff and flexible, and are in general f
airly fragile. Your task is to generate
a gripper-concept that:
1.
is light-weight (the payload of
robots is reduced by the weight
of the gripper).
2.
can easily adapt itself or be a
dapted to different parts to be
handled
3.
uses a (mechanical) standard int
erface to be mounted on differe
nt types of smaller
robots
4.
has at least one type of sensor (pressure, temperature, weight
…) to be integrated,
to give the robots the “feeling” they need for handling process
es
5.
is free of sharp edges as to minimize the risk of injury for workers or damaging
handled parts
6.
is offering a set of interchangeable gripper elements to realiz
e different gripper
types, in order to reduce costs
During the early phase of the d
esign process, you should strive
to thoroughly understand
the customer needs. You should also thoroughly investigate rela
ted products and incorporate the
best features from them into your design.
Each member of the team must create and analyze their own House
of Quality for
Homework #1 and a specification list for Homework #2. These related individual assignments
can be worked on as a team, but each student must submit their
own version and their own
written discussion of the House of
Quality and specification li
st.
1) Deliverables due at the beg
inning of studio in Week 2
2
i) Report on your cantilever-building exercise. (3 pts)
An updated version of the project
executive summary that takes in
to consideration the comments pr
ovided to you by your
instructor and TA. The summary should be a maximum of one page in length, using 12 point
font, 1 inch margins and a line space setting of 1.5. Copies of
any supporting sketches should be
correctly formatted and labeled, and they should be attached to the back of the executive
summary. Comment on the lengths of your cantilevers, as well as
the lengths of the other groups
in the class. Comment on your rela
tive performance. (See Studio
1 handout).
2) Deliverables due at the
end of studio in Week 2
i) Presentation on problem understanding. (PowerPoint, given by
1 person, 5 min)
Describe the design problem as your team understands it. Presen
t a list of customer needs and
explain which ones are the most important. Summarize your work
by stating the most important
design objectives. Do not present any preliminary design ideas
.
3) Deliverables due at the beg
inning of studio in Week 3
i) An Excel spreadsheet containing:
Present and discuss a House of
Quality. Review alternative prod
ucts currently on the market and
describe their strengths and weaknesses. (Any pictures/videos that you obtain from the Internet
must have their source clearly indicated.) Also, present and di
scuss a list of all the alternative
products that your team located. Gi
ve the product name, company, price, and cite
your sources of
product information.
ii) A presentation on five preliminary design ideas. (PowerPoint, 1 person, 7 min)
Display a function tree and point out the most difficult functi
ons to achieve. List your
specifications and discuss the mo
st challenging specifications. Describe the functionality of your
five preliminary designs. The designs should be distinct from e
ach other. A change in color or
size is not sufficient to qualify as a distinct alternative design. Discuss any app
licable patents that
may limit or influence your desig
n project. Discuss any acciden
ts or lawsuits that are relevant to
your design.
iii) A written document containing: (2 pts)
1)
Introduction
section of your design report communicating your problem understanding. This
should include relevant state-of-the-art and customer needs or
concerns. It should conclude with
a set of main objectives for your design.
2)
Appendix
: to include supporting informa
tion for the Introduction, incl
uding:
a)
A list of accident scen
arios for the product.
b)
A list of relevant accidents. Give whatever descriptive informa
tion you can. Document
these using IEEE reference format.
c)
A list of relevant patents. Document these using IEEE reference
format for patents,
including the patent number, title, and date.
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