IMechE team led by Dr. C.K. Chan participated the Greater China Design Competition 2022. This competition was held by the IMechE (HK) (Institution of Mechanical Engineers).
According to statistics, 42% of construction site fatalities involved falls. Trip and Falls, falls from high heights or scaffolding or rolling over of heavy machine are among the most common cause of injury. Hence, development of an active balancing device could be a solution. This year’s challenge focuses on designing an Active Balancing Device of which can be used for balancing an object at different slope or landscape. The objective of this competition is to design a robot capable of balancing itself on a seesaw and keep the seesaw in a horizontal level as fast as possible. Competitors are marked based on different criteria, including base marks for completing the trial, time taken, seesaw angle deviation and bonus marks.
Due to the pandemic event, the competition was arranged online. Participants from local and mainland China are required to present and demonstrate their design through the internet. On 2022 March 26-27, our team joined the competition. Through the competition, our team exchanged our design idea and experience with other teams and learned a lot about different approaches to resolve a practical engineering problem. By the end, our team win the championship honorably.
Our team consists of three members: Chan Kin Wai, Wong Stanley Andrew and Yu Man Cheuk. They were working from 2021 Sep to 2022 March to design and build balance robot. Our team resolved the problem with the engineering approach. Different types of design for the robot were evaluated and compared, and a 3-wheel robot with roller clamps utilizing a DC brushless motor was used in the end. For the robot control, PID control and machine learning were considered. The team members have experienced a hard year but also full of fruits.
Photo of the team.
Photo of the robot.