Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with the MIT Smart Cities group as an undergraduate lemming. However, in stark contrast with the horror stories of some of my fellow lemmings with positions in other departments and labs, my job freakin’ rawks. So does the whole Media Lab, in fact. It’s right up there on my favorite places on campus list, right next to the Mexican fast food place. I get to do what I do best – think of things and then build them.
Anyway, I’ve been specifically working on the light electric scooter/motorcycle doohickey, something all -3 of you who read my site should recall me talking about some time in early August. The responsibility of the group here is to create a display stand for the most innovative component – the self-contained in-wheel motor-suspension-et-cetera “wheel robot”.
AHH! It’s a wheel floating in midair!
Actually, the mount for the thing is just clear Lexan. Here’s the upper half of the display stand.
The “wheel robot” close up. The motor is a 600W brushed unit that cogs like a beast – indicative of beastly torque. The actual production model, according to the bigwigs, will be brushless. This I like.
The display stand case, painted “flat institute wall white”. LCD flat panels will fit in the rectangular gaps and interface with a PC on the inside to play boring presentations.
Here’s my main contribution. This unit mates some motor controllers, buttons, blinkenlichten, and an Arduino embedded controller to run both the drive motor and the suspension actuator (the coil-over shocks are replaced with small linear actuators to show the multi-link suspension movement). The Arduino takes button inputs and controls a Victor 48HV and Scorpion XL. It’s all smacked onto a piece of scrap Lexan, which somehow fit perfectly in a convenient location and was selected for the job based on this.
It can be seen running the show in one of the above pics.
Anyway, since this will be going to the Milan Motor Show in a few weeks, the next few days will concentrate on testing and generally beating the shit out of it. Because I’m not going to be in Milan, and therefore it cannot break. Ever. Ever, in this case, is defined as “Not until we get it back here”.
The display stand ships… in a few hours, which is why I went in to help out and to finish this off. After this is all done, there will be more exciting things to come.
It’s not just Battlebots any more.
Oh, and if you’re in Kendall Square any time soon, do not stand here.
U R having way too much fun up there dude :)