This is my Second Engineering Competition

Back at it again with the Ryerson Engineering Competition. My team grew and the challenge now is harder since we are now in third year of our studies. The team with the addition of Sabrina and Binh, competed in Senior Design. Senior Design is much more complex than the Junior Design. Senior design utilizes the use of circuit design and Arduino Uno micro-controller as well as other craft items.

REC 2017

The Objective

The objective is to design an automated server that can take an item (load) from the kitchen to the tables. The layout of the restaurant is shown below. It is important to note that the order of the table matters and that the automated server must serve the tables in order.

Restaurant Layout

The Design

The design is a crane like structure that folds and unfolds in 4 different components

• Main Component: A servo motor that rotates the entire device around the restaurant.

• Wrist Like Component: A servo motor that unfolds from the main component to extend the load (plate) to the table.

• Opening Claw Component: Another servo motor is used to open from the 'tray' pf the wrist like component.

• Closing Claw Component: The same servo used to open the tray also closes the tray once the load is laid on the table.

The Result

Unfortunately, the device became front heavy due to the amount of servos at the end of the crane and fell over. The system can be improved by providing a better truss system as well as providing a heavier load in the center of the system to prevent falling on front. Another problem we encountered is the amount of wires in the circuit and the servo limiting the rotation.