• AnyAdapter Development Journal 1

    Junzhe Guo (Sebastian) • 04/08/2024 at 15:35 • 0 comments

    Development Journal 1

    After modeling and preliminary prototyping of our design we held a small demonstration at Microsoft. We got some very valuable feedback during this presentation, especially from an engineering perspective. We discovered a possible user problem: the user may not have enough ability to adjust the robotic arm. In the past design process, we took into account the poor mobility of the upper limbs that wheelchair users may have, and therefore specially designed the way for users to install the adapter. However, if our past design is used, the user may not have enough strength to adjust the adapter's position. If the adapter is designed to be extremely easy to adjust, its stability will be reduced. So here comes a problem.

    Our mentor had previously mentioned whether we should consider installing a motor at the connection to make it electric, and we retained this suggestion at the time. Now, in order to solve the problem of users adjusting the position of the adapter base, we have officially decided to change our Adapter base to a robotic arm form.

    In order to reduce the pressure of design and construction, we decided to use some parts and components of universal robotic arms to build the robotic arm, but in the later stage, we used appropriate methods to shield it to avoid exposure of the metal structure. We added the circular motion of the adapter base in the horizontal direction and the circular motion of the joint into the category of the robotic arm. We made new sketches for the new design. In addition, we referenced and selected some general-purpose robotic arms to build some movable prototypes to test the feasibility.

    In terms of material selection, we tried to use Arduino accessories provided by IMA studios to build, but we found that they were not suitable for our project, either from functional or aesthetic considerations. We decided to purchase some existing robotic arms, test their performance and learn their movement patterns, and finally incorporate them into our design.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wk5S075zK4KK7bGrQCoCO1rIJTV7voBi/view?usp=sharing