Every year in the great buildoff that is MIT’s 2.007 Design & Manufacturing I class, there are several ‘pack leader’ students who, whether through some prior experience (e.g. in FIRST Robotics) or their own build-driven volition, demonstrate exceptional robot designs. It’s a relaxing break from the usual crowd of bent sheet metal and plywood servo ants with too much weight on the nondriven caster which, while important to newbie builders (and everyone, including me, builds one eventually when they start out), is just kind of painful to watch. It shows well that the caliber of design execution is affected more strongly by your knowledge and prior experience with tools and methodology than just the quality of parts you get in a box. Because honestly, the stuff in the robot kits aren’t first-class at all – plastic-geared motors (though they’re quite interesting), continuous rotation servos, and god those horrible derpy caster wheels. But really, is it any more effective to give coreless Maxon gearmotors to people who barely knew what a motor was before this class?
Anyways, some examples of Nice Bots from the past few weeks have been compiled below:
There will surely be more examples as the final half of the semester (wait, really? Crap…) wraps up!
Now, how’s my own “undergraduate victory garden” of seedlings doing? I’ll post an update on the Electric Vehicle group soon.