Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 | Self-balancing Food Tray Honorable Mention |
Jay Kim Mitchell Kremer Taylor Xia |
Xiangyuan Zhang | design_document1.pdf design_document2.pdf final_paper1.pdf proposal1.pdf video |
|
| Team Members: - Taylor Xia (tyxia2) - Jay Kim (jonghok2) - Mitchell Kremer(mkremer3) # Problem Even for waiters and waitresses with experience, it may be a struggle to carry out and balance trays of food and beverages at restaurants while navigating around customers and rows of tables, especially with heavier and unevenly loaded trays. This is especially true when going to lower the tray down onto a nearby table or onto a folding servers table as the transition in height introduces potential dangers in stability. With the recent growing popularity of robotic and automated waiters, the need for a self-stabilizing platform or tray could prove valuable to this emerging technology. Modern day waiter robots are slow, boxy, and require the user to ultimately still take the food off of the robot’s carrying trays. With a small stabilizing platform, robots can be built to move faster with less risk and can actually serve food to a table like an actual waiter would. # Solution Our solution is to make a small, easy to carry electronic multi-axis gimbal stabilizing system to be carried between the servers hand and their tray that will stabilize the serving tray in real time to ensure that no drinks or food tip over while serving customers when encountering smaller/slower impacts and disturbances. This would allow the restaurant to save costs on lost food, drinks, and dishware while preventing dangers such as hot food being spilled on the nearby patrons. Subsystem 1 - IMU The IMU will contain gyroscopes and accelerometers that will provide the necessary orientation data for the necessary adjustments needed for the system to balance itself. Subsystem 2 - POWER SUPPLY Since our stabilization system will involve four stepper motors so as to have multi-axis capabilities, we would need a power supply with enough rated amperage for four of these motors and have the rated voltage of one of the motors. Depending on which type of motors we use, we will need either a 24V 4A to 48V 8A. See more details in “Balancing System” section. Subsystem 3 - MICROCONTROLLER We will use a microcontroller to receive the signals from the IMU to control the overall system and balance the tray. We will need a microcontroller that will produce a pwm signal of 250MHz, so we anticipate using the Teensy 4.0, but will also take into consideration the ATmega328P if complications occur. Subsystem 4 - BALANCING SYSTEM The main backbone of our balancing system will of course be the 4 stepper motors we chose to use and the 4 arms connected to each motor. The arms will be made of 3D printed PLA plastic with steel ball bearing joints. We will need to ensure the layer density of our printed arms is high enough to support the bearings; since PLA is relatively smooth already, friction is not as much of an issue. The motor we chose to use will both determine the weight of our system and the maximum carrying capacity of our tray. For this purpose, we have determined that either a Nema size 17, 14, or 11 stepper motor would fit for our project. Our choice of power supply will have to accommodate the motor we decide to go with. # Criterion for success - Criterion 1: The system must be able to balance itself when the axis carrying the surface encounters gradual tilts up to a 30 degree angle - Criterion 2: The system must be able to be resilient when encountering sudden, small bumps or stops - Criterion 3: The system will use a red LED to indicate when the angle of the axis goes beyond the accepted limit and beep to alert and encourage the server to hold still until it’s safe and the led will turn green and the beeping will stop. |
|||||