Design
Preliminary Design
The design of our robot manipulates gravity to carry bottles of assorted sizes and materials into certain tests. First a pressure test with a succeeding glass bin, a metal test and a succeeding plastic bin, a magnetic test for a tin bin, and then a final bin for the aluminum cans. We will use servos to operate as doors. For example, the metal test will use a metal sensor in which if an electric current is present, the doors will open to allow tin and aluminum cans to pass through, but if failed, a door will open for plastic bottles to enter the plastic bin.
Final Design
Our final design utilizes the basic principles of our preliminary design, except with structure changes, removal of a pressure test, and the adjustment of the order of tests.
Our first test was the voltage test consists of two wires testing an object’s potential to conduct electricity and complete a circuit. If the two wires touch an object capable of conduction, then the test will pass, because an electrical circuit will be complete. If the bottle being tested is plastic, a circuit will not be complete, and will therefore fail the test.
After running the test, the servo’s gates will swing open if the object successfully passed the test. If it failed, the gates will swing open to allow the bottle to drop down to a nonmetal route.
There, the bottle will undergo a simple weight test, where if it is glass, it will be heavy enough to push open flexible doors and into its bin. If it is plastic, it will be light and therefore bounce off the door and slide down to its respective bin.
Returning to the voltage test, if a bottle is metal and passes the test, then only one of the servo’s will swing open, allowing the bottle to slide to the next test. This next test is a magnetic test to differentiate between aluminum and tin, aluminum not being magnetic and tin being magnetic. The bottle will come into contact to a magnetic sensor, where it will similarly pass or fail. If it passes, on of the servos’ door will swing open to drop to its bin. If it passes, then the last servo’s door will open to allow the can to slide down to its bin.
Below is our project constructed from our modified design:
Below is our final product of the robot. Click the video to watch a demonstration of the sorting of the different materials(in order): plastic, glass, aluminum, and tin.
