The head piece is made up of four 3D printed parts that house the light and infrared sensors and glide smoothly around the globe. All the parts were modeled in Solidworks, 3D printed and sanded down, covered with a smoothing coating, and spray painted black to match the globe.
We also modified the lateral servo motor to spin 360 degrees. We disassembled it, grinded down some metal pins and stops, and replaced the internal potentiometer with 2 2.2k resistors. This allows for velocity input instead of specific angles.
BUILDING THE GUTS
We used laser cut plywood for the bulk of the interior pieces, as well as for housing the external electronics and power sources. We went through a bunch of iterations before landing on designs that were both strong and lightweight.
FINAL ELECTRONIC ASSEMBLY
This is all of the electronic components wired up, complete with a plywood laser cut housing to store all the power sources and circuit boards. Cord control was super important and unbelievably frustrating at this stage. With so many moving parts, we had to make sure the wires stayed connected and didn't get coiled up around the arms. Everything kept coming apart over and over.
FULL MOTION TRACKING
Outside of the globe, we had everything working perfectly. The light tracked pretty spot on to the location of an infrared light source. Unfortunately, once we encased it in the globe, we lost access to most of the wiring so it was super difficult to tell what was still connected. We also realized we cut the vertical slit too narrow, so it got jammed a lot in that opening. That, and 100 other tiny problems, kept the final product from working like we wanted, so we controlled it with a joystick instead for the demo.
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