Team Just Tryna Graduate

Joe Campo

Controls and Systems Specialist

Joe was in charge of the majority of the software and overlooked system integration. He is the reason for design decisions which make the software more straightforward. He is interested in pursuing controls and robotics after graduation. His catchphrase is "Just first make it work."

Elon Gordon

Prototyping Lead

Elon designed a majority of the arm and chest mechanisms and spearheaded the days of prototyping and testing. He specializes in integrating design with manufacturing and assembly. His catchphrase is "Don't worry, I fixed that in the next version."

James Harrison

Platform Engineer/Handiman

James is the leader of development of the platform of the project. He is also known as a general handiman, doing jobs from design to soldering and machining. If something needs to get done, you can trust him to take care of it. His laugh is detectable in a 5 mile radius.

Nikiander Pelari

Signals and Electrical Engineer

Niki takes care of all of the electrons no one else on the team knew what to do with. He developed the human sensing component of the project and was the resident expert on electronics. His catchphrase is "Malaka!"

John Cervone

Logistics and Analytics

John works on MATLAB geometric analysis of systems and gets the team to achieve logistical deliverables. He may be caught fresh from a Tae Kwon Do tournament.

Project Rockem

Reimagining a childhood game

Our project was aimed to do two things: give all of us a chance to push our technical skills on to new heights and to relive a childhood game in a fun and nostalgic way. We wanted to make a fully human-controlled game of rockem sockem robots.

This project is two robots which fight via punching and dodging just like Rockem Sockem Robots, but the control is all managed by harvesting a human player's motions. The gave us chance to make complex mechanical systems, work with a number of actuators, and try our hand at human behavior harvesting. Joe And Niki learned a lot about signal processing and control, and the mechanical team got a chance to tackle the deceptively difficult problem of making two robots that were supposed to hit eachother, but not damage each other in the process. We call it a controlled conflict of robotic workspaces.

The project both turned out to be an excellent learning experience as well as incredibly rewarding to make a toy so nostalgic and also so fun to play! One of our major goals was to have lots of fun working on this project; the end product being a game we play against eachother to test helps a lot!

Preliminary Work

How we got our start

October

Research

We wanted to explore what other people had done. Part of this meant buying our own new set of rockem sockem robots (for research of course...). We explored how these and other mechanisms for arm punching toys operated. The below patents definitely inspired some of our initial designs. We also found a few very novel ideas for how to make a fully articulated arm like this and this. Eventualy we decided on binary punches operated by solenoids for consistany and predictability.

December

Prototyping

Initial design concepts

We finally got to testing some preliminary components. We created an acrylic arm on a stand, operated by a solenoid, and were able to prove both our punching design and control method. The cad of the demo is shown below. One of the insights we obtained was which pieces to make out of aluminum instead of plastic (the ones which broke in the prototype...). We took this prototype design and optimized it for the type of punch we desired, eventually settling on final geometries for the linkages.

March

CAD

Refined Design

After deciding on final parameters of control and design, we moved on to CADing a final system. Below is a few differnt views of the final product and the detailed drawngs of assmblies and parts to be 3D printed and machined! Not pictured: the rat's nest of wires that were then very carefully organized and color coded by Joe and Niki.

May

Play

Assembly and Programming

With a refined CAD and a wiring harness, we were able to get the entire project manufactured, assembled, and tested. After many sleepless nights, we are able to pit two people against eachother in a game of Rock 'em! Seen below is a video of the red robot being beaten up by the blue during testing.

The Product

Looks like fun!

The System

This final assembly shows two robots fighting. Currently, capability for pitch and yaw dodging, left punches to the chest, and right punches to the head are supported. Because of the IMUs being the method of punch sensing, we can also award more points for "harder" punches. The head and chests are outfitted with 5 degrees os sensing, allowing for a dynamic hit effectiveness algorithm. With the ability to weight different hits more or less, we hope to be able to make the game even more dynamic, favoring several different stylings of fighting. We are happy to say that on the conclusion of a game, the losing robot still has their head pop up, creating the satisfying victory reaction that is so essential to the originalgame itself.

Perhaps in further iterations of the project, we will implement wireless sensors, cameras on the heads, or more dynamic dodging mechanisms like traversal as well as tilt. For the time being, we find there to be enough flexibility in the game to yield hours of fun.

Learn More

Check out some of our (relatively recent) documentation

Final ReportTechnical ReviewExpo Slideshow