After completing more extensive testing of the integrated components, the Addtronics team dove right into prototype inspection day. For our demo, we gave a quick introduction of who we are and the project our sponsor has tasked to complete throughout this course which is to open the lid of a single phase pad mounted transformer by integrating a quadruped and robotic arm. We then highlighted some of the key features of our design and jumped into a demonstration of the arm physically lifting the lid of our transformer pad mounted test box. For our design, the quadruped will be aligned in front of the transformer pad and will be lowered to the ground as seen in the picture above. Once on the ground the robotic arm will extend from its stowed position out and position the end effector under the lip of the lid. The lid will sit in the slotted portion of the end effector to reduce slipping and then the robotic arm will be moved to lift the box initially as seen at the end of the video below. The video below highlights some of the specific tests we conducted leading up to prototype inspection day and shows how the quadruped will be walked over to the transformer pad and lowered to then allow the arm to lift the lid.

Looking Ahead

Throughout our journey in preparing this demo for prototype inspection day we learned a lot through our testing and received a lot of useful feedback as well. Moving forward we plan to explore design variations for the chassis using a different material, use stronger picatinny rails made of a different material, as well as explore different end effector options. For the electrical components we plan to do more testing on the motors to make them more efficient, further organize the electrical box, and integrate the quadruped to directly act as the power supply of the arm. Finally, we plan to stream video of the quadrupeds point of view using the camera on board the quadruped and incorporate a GUI that can be used on a mobile app to control both the arm and quadruped using the same controller. Overall, there is still quite a bit of work to be done to make our design stronger, more reliable, and more user friendly. We look forward to sharing all our progress in accomplishing these goals with you!