THIS MONTH:
The San Diego Job
We’ve all been there — you’ve
outsmarted the alarm system,
outmaneuvered the guards,
and outmatched the inevitable laser
security devices to finally arrive at the
safe. You’ve smartly brought a robot
along to do your dirty work, and just
as your mechanical minion is twisting
in the combination the police arrive
because your robot was too slow!
We’re talking about optimization,
of course. You have an initial design,
but things can always be improved
through analysis and iteration. Such a
process might even be more commonplace in the realm of engineering
innovation than the introduction of
completely new ideas, because often
the most stunning advances are only
made by standing on the shoulders
of giants.
Better Than Dressing
Up In A Clown Suit
Evan has made it to his fourth
year of majoring in mechanical
engineering at the University of
California, San Diego, and he must
make it through the capstone design
courses before he can claim his
degree. The capstone design course is
known as Fundamental Principles of
Mechanical Design, and is given the
FIGURE 1. THE UNOPTIMIZED SAFE-CRACKER.
FIGURE 2. OUR KITS OF PARTS.
fearsome designation of MAE 156A/B.
But what project could possibly draw
upon the comprehensive course of
study undertaken by mechanical
engineers, including everything from
computer programming and circuit
design to materials science and three
dimensional dynamics? A robotics
project, of course!
Dr. Nathan Delson, the co-instructor and mastermind for the
course along with Dr. Matthew
Hedayatnia, prefers to think of the
task as a mechatronics project
because of the tightly intertwined
nature of the mechanical and
electronic aspects of the project. MAE
156A students are tasked
with building a robot for the
mechatronics project every
year for a prescribed task.
Veteran SERVO readers
might remember that Evan
has already had to build one
robot at UCSD for the lower
division course MAE 3, and
it was a robot that stacked
rings. For MAE 156A,
students were tasked with
optimizing a safe-cracking
robot. An unoptimized
“Safe-Craking Robot” (even
68 SERVO 01.2009
