Integration of FIRST and PLTW John Wise Lee Smalley Andy Newell

Project Lead the Way Five engineering classes which teaches the fundamental ideas behind engineering Its goal is to better prepare students for college curriculum It gives students experience and knowledge in the field of engineering Students can earn college credit to RIT and USC for all the classes

Engineering Design and Development In the final culminating course of the PLTW program: Students are given the challenge of solving an engineering problem. Basically inventing or bettering a product or process Our group used the robot’s tetra manipulator as our product to design

Our Place With this new problem to be solved, we saw an opportunity to take on our own sub-team and design and develop the manipulator for the robot. Prior to the formation of our group, the team had elected to use a spear to lift and lower the tetra. We saw this solution to be simple but lacked consistency and durability.

Brainstorming Servo-motor gripper Grappling hook Forked spear Pneumatic claw devise Hook with spring Spear Retractable Hooks Suction device Lead screw claw Many more We compiled a list of 46 ideas which could possibly be used in our lift-arm mechanism. These included:

Five Main Ideas Magnetic Fork Spear Hook Two Point Base Grabber Lead Screw Claw with Guiding Shield Weight Sensitive Spear Hook

Our Proposed Solution We interviewed many engineers and students on the team and with their input we decided to design and construct the weight sensitive spear so that when the weight of the tetra was on the arm an end piece would flip up and keep the tetra from falling off. We then began to design by building and testing prototypes.

First Prototype With our first prototype we discovered we were able to accomplish what we needed to do. It still needed a lot of work.

Redesign and Sketches We rethought our design and came up with a new idea which would be smoother and more consistent.

Our Design This new prototype worked exactly as we needed it to!

We Still had a Problem Our arm must be able to fold inside the robot while still fitting to the robot’s size constraints. We designed plates with a built in axle to allow the arm to fold up.

Testing The Manipulator After we put the arm on the robot it was shipped to the University of Central Florida where it was ready for competition. It performed excellently! Match 5 Match 10 Match 18

Thank you for your time!