MDA PressThe Mini Starship Delivery Robot
Angelina Licos is a UCI engineering student who seems to have a gift for filmmaking along with her skills in project engineering. Select this link to see her video of the adventures of a Mini Starship Delivery Robot.
2023 Southern California Robotics Symposium
UCI is hosting SCR 2023: On September 14 and 15 Robotics researchers and graduate students from across Southern California will meet in UCI’s Pacific Ballroom to discuss the future of robotics.
Henrik Christiansen, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering from UC San Diego will provide a Keynote Lecture on mega-trends, changes in workforce, emerging applications and the resulting new challenges in robotics.
Find more information at the SCR 2023 web page.
MDA Press2024 UCI Racecar Engineering
Universities across Southern California start soon, and Engineering teams will begin the design and fabrication of their race cars for the the SAE Formula ICE and EV and the SAE Baja 2024 intercollegiate competitions. These student race teams need the support of their alumni, so please contact your home team and find a way to help.
UCI Alums and Friends: Our young UCI engineers were kept out of the Racecar lab for too long because of Covid. They are back and committed to demonstrating the high quality of UCI Engineering at the SAE intercollegiate competitions. And we need your help.
If UCI racecar engineering has impacted you in any way, or if you are passionate about our racecars and competition, I hope you’ll join the community of alumni and friends who support UCI Racecar Engineering by donating to https://zotfunder.give.uci.edu/racing.
Registration fees are due in October and we need running cars by March 2024. Here is the breakdown of costs:
Registration fees for the SAE EV and Baja competitions: $5,000
Kohler CH440 engine: $1,200
Subsystem Costs for Baja vehicle: $11,000
Subsystem Costs for EV vehicle: $15,000
It is easy to see that this $35,000 campaign is just a beginning. Additional funds such as costs for travel to the competitions, are not included in the campaign total so I hope I can count on your support today and for years to come. Please contribute in whatever way you can. The impact of your support is immeasurable!
MDA Press15 Terrific Robot Walkers
This Spring quarter 60 students divided into 15 teams to design and build robot walkers. Two stepper motors drive a set of legs on each side. These legs are formed from a pair of six-bar linkages that provide coordinated rectilinear movement of two feet on each side providing stable legged locomotion.
I am always amazed by the creativity of the students in the design of the personalities of these walkers.
The ribbons and medals decorate the walkers with the three best times through our autocross course.
MechGen Software Privacy Policy
McCarthy Design Associates has developed a variety of linkage design tools that it makes available to engineers around the world. In particular, the MechGen FG and MechGen SP applications are marketed through the Apple App Store. None of our software applications collects information about the individuals who purchase or use this software. In particular, MechGen FG and MechGen SP are self-contained software tools for the kinematic synthesis of linkages that have no interaction external to the user’s device, which means no information about the user or the use of this software resides anywhere except on the user’s own system under their control. If you have any questions about this privacy policy please contact Prof. McCarthy.
MDADesign of Mechanical Walking Robots
Now Available on Amazon
In this book, we present the detailed design of mechanical walking robots that are driven by a single motor. These walkers rely on specially designed leg mechanisms coordinated by gear trains in order to walk, rather than multiple computer controlled motors per leg. The result is a simplified walking robot that provides a platform for other mechanical and electronic functions.
Two, four and six legged walkers are presented that implement different types of leg mechanisms and power trains. In each case, we provide drawings for a laser cut wood or acrylic chassis, 3D printed parts and a complete parts list. Several of the designs implement an additional motor for steering as well as electronic components and software for speed control.
Our goal is to provide enthusiasts of all backgrounds what they need to build a walking robot at home, to explore new design ideas, and, perhaps, to enjoy the operation of one of these robots as it moves across the ground.
The paperback version is available from Amazon.
MDA Press21st Century Kinematics: NSF Workshop
I am pleased to provide the presentations from the 2012 National Science Foundation Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics. These presentations provide insight to the challenges and opportunities for research in mechanical systems and robotics.
The NSF Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics at the 2012 ASME IDETC Conference in Chicago, IL on August 11-12, 2012 consisted of a series of presentations and a book of supporting material prepared by the workshop contributors.
The book is available at amazon.com: 21st Century Kinematics–The 2012 NSF Workshop.
And here are the presentations given at the workshop.
- Computer-Aided Invention of Mechanisms and Robots. J. Michael McCarthy, Professor, University of California, Irvine.
- Mechanism Synthesis for Modeling Human Movement Vincenzo Parenti-Castelli, Professor, University of Bologna.
- Algebraic Geometry and Kinematic Synthesis. Manfred Husty, Professor, University of Innsbruck.
- Kinematic Synthesis of Compliant Mechanisms. Larry Howell, Professor, Brigham Young University.
- Kinematics and Numerical Algebraic Geometry. Charles Wampler, Technical Fellow, General Motors Research and Development.
- Kinematic Analysis of Cable Robotic Systems. Vijay Kumar, Professor, University of Pennsylvania.
- Protein Kinematics. Kazem Kazerounian, Professor, University of Connecticut.
- Development of Fast Pick and Place Robots. Jorge Angeles, Professor, McGill University.
- Kinestatic Analysis of Mechanisms with Compliant Elements. Carl Crane, Professor, University of Florida.
It seems time to consider another similar workshop for 2022.
MDAThe Bored Robot: Controlling Two Drive Motors for a Walking Machine
Brandon Tsuge describes how to assemble the controller for two motors to drive the right and left sides of a walking machine using an RC transmitter and controller. See The Bored Robot: Using a DC Brushed Motor with a Rotary Encoder.
MDA PressHow to Fix SW Motion Analysis Error: Too Many Redundant Constraints
Kevin Chen, J. Michael McCarthy, Shaun Bentley
The design and assembly of our four-legged mechanical walkers can yield single degree-of-freedom systems with so many redundant mates that it stalls SolidWorks’ Motion Analysis. For example, the walker shown in Figure 1 had 782 redundant mates. The procedure outlined below reduced the number of redundant mates to 114, and Motion Analysis executed efficiently.
Our walker consists of a body, drive train, and four legs. The legs mechanisms are identical but assembled as front-to-back mirror images. The component parts of this walker mates were assembled using mates to align and coordinate various subassemblies, resulting in a large number of redundant mates.
In order to reduce the number of redundant mates, we dissolve the subassemblies, combine rigid elements, and mate new subassemblies as follows.
Step 1
Dissolve all of the subassemblies in the walker. To do this, hover over each assembly and select the menu item Dissolve Assembly. See Figure 1.
Step 2
Form new subassemblies for each leg, the drive train, and the body. See Figure 2. To do this, first, hover over the part, press “tab” to hide the part in order to identify it easily; and then, select all of the hidden parts, and right-click to open menu and select Form New Subassembly.
Step 3
Within each new subassembly combine parts that do not move relative to each other. See Figure 3. The tree structure should consist of separate assemblies of rigid elements with the remaining mates between the assemblies. See Figure 4.
Step 4
Repeat Step 3 for all of the new subassemblies. The result is shown in Figure 5.
Step 5
Delete the mates in the main assembly. Introduce the mates required for movement using hinge mates, rather than coincident or concentric mates, where possible.
Step 6
Make the subassemblies at the top-level flexible. Right-click on the assembly and select the flexible assembly icon .
The result of this procedure is a system with 114 redundant mates that Motion Analysis can process effectively. The result is that animation shown below.
MDAThe Design of Mechanical Walkers: Spring 2020 Student Projects
While isolated to slow infections of the Coronavirus, over 60 UCI students learned how to apply the principles of Curvature Theory and Finite-Position Synthesis to the design leg mechanisms for mechanical walkers.
Their first team project was a four-legged walker that used the coupler curve of a four-bar linkage positioned using a skew-pantograph as the foot trajectory. Here are videos that show animations of their walkers
This is the first video:
And this is the second:
The final team project used finite-position synthesis to design function generators to drive the hip and knee joints and guide the foot trajectory. This mechanism is a generalization of the Jansen leg mechanism. Teams of three students designed the leg mechanism, the drive system and assembled them into a six-legged walker. Here are the videos of these walkers.
This is the first video:
And this is the second video:
The variety of these walkers show the versatility of the kinematic synthesis procedures, as well as the creativity of the students. It was a pleasure working with the students on these projects even with the challenges of remote instruction.