Final Demonstration: Foosbot

Now that all the graduation celebrations are complete we are ready to show Foosbot to the rest of the world. Enjoy this HD video taken at the University of Akron showroom.

Updates: Senior Design Presentation and RoboGames

The Foosbot prototype has been completed. We have been very busy and I haven't had time to update the blog. Let me run you through the last few weeks of Foosbot's life!

We presented Foosbot on senior design presentation day on Friday, April 13th. The project worked well and was well received by the audience and faculty. Joe, Bryan, and Ahmed stayed up in the lab until 6:30AM to finish the PWM (pulse-width-modulated) signal generating circuit to drive the stepper motors. This upgrade along with the replacement of the steel foosmen rods with hollow aluminum rods greatly increased the response of our kicking motors.

Shortly after senior design presentations, the team took Foosbot apart and readied all the hardware for travel to San Mateo, California to compete in the RoboGames, the worlds largest robotics competition. There are multiple categories and the admittance to compete is unrestricted in terms of age and occupation. There were companies and teams that designed robots from all over the world including Japan, Taiwan, Sweden, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, USA, and more. The category we competed in is called "Best of Show". In this category, all robots present at the competition are in contest, whether be it an art (music) robot, combat bot of any weight class, soccer bots, fighting robots, assistance robots, etc. Because of the broad admittance in the competition, there were many interesting and valiant projects.

Among these projects is one made by a corporate robotics firm from Japan. Their project won 1st prize in the "Best of Show" competition for being a fighting robot that is controlled through a motion-sensing camera. The project worked flawlessly to emulate what it's human counterpart acted out on camera.

Second place went to a team of electrical and computer engineers from Turkey. Their project was a robotic arm with finger functionality. The unique component about their arm is that it is controlled solely by cognitive signals of the wearer. They are able to lift, rotate, and grab objects with this arm without any input from the user other than his mind!

We are very happy and humble to have taken 3rd place in the "Best of Show" competition with Foosbot. Though the project is a prototype, we are most pleased with the robustness of the overall design. Kids were lined up to play against Foosbot for the entire duration of the three-day competition and everyone that saw it in action crowded around in intrigue. It was humbling to see our senior design project so well received. The most common question posed to us during the competition was "How does it see the ball?!"

Speaking of questions, Team Foosbot was interviewed briefly by NBC and later by Wired Magazine. Also, the University of Akron is in the process of writing an article about our success in the Buchtelite and/or the online newsletter. We are happy that there was so much interest in our senior design project.

The College of Engineering at Akron will host a "Senior Design Expo" on April 26th, 2012 from 11am to 1pm. We encourage everyone that follows us to attend this event! Come see the other teams that also competed at RoboGames and the rest of the great projects that came out this year.

Updated Sensing Demonstration

Hey everyone! Team Foosbot is back to give a detailed explanation of the ball-tracking method. In the attached video, Bryan shows how the ball will be "seen" by the sensors and sensing method. The original video I posted explained the sensing method and how it will work on a circuit level. Bryan's explanation includes a terminal output that displays the position of the ball as it moves across the table in real-time as an addition to the video I produced. Enjoy!

Doesn't Bryan look so snazzy!?

Get the credits rolling!

With the coming of donated components and cash support, Team Foosbot would like to take the opportunity to thank our sponsors and affiliates through this post and by making a dedicated page on our blog for them. Once the project is completely assembled, videos of the functioning components will be added to said page. For now, it's fitting to show a list of sponsors and affiliates with descriptions of their contributions and a link to their respective home on the internet.

Companies that donated hardware components:

For the donation of linear actuators for use with the
CoolMuscle motors to move foosmen across the table.
http://www.macrondynamics.com/

For the donation of the CoolMuscle motors to move the foosmen
laterally across the table. http://www.myostat.ca/

 Cash donations came from:

For being an independent sponsor/supporter and financial donor.
http://www.rovisys.com/

For being an independent sponsor/supporter and financial donor.
http://3rdgroup.ae/

In affiliation with:

For providing an excellent education experience
throughout the undergraduate level of an ABET-
accredited Electrical Engineering program.
http://www.uakron.edu/engineering/ECE/

Video of Foosbot's Functioning Eyes!

Just posted an HD video on YouTube to show how Foosbot will track the ball using a grid of infrared phototransistors and LEDs. The video also serves as a proof of concept for the multiplexer addressing scheme - to change which LED/PT pairs are activated based on a 4-bit address change. Enjoy!

Sensing sensors properly sensed....

All of the LEDs and phototransistors are now all completely installed in the wood-recessing blocks and completely soldered and connected to the sensing PCBs! Check out the photos that follow to see how the foosball table will roughly look during presentation.

Top of table showing all LED's and phototransistors installed
 in the wooden recessing  blocks along the parameter of the
table. Also pictured (right) is the LED/PT testing circuit we built to
test the sensors manually.

Another photo of the top of the table.

Furthermore, fabrication of the support table is complete and it's now in our lab! Thanks to Joe's dad for his expertise in carpentry and skillful implementation of our adjustable leg design! Pictures follow showing how the table will be setup once the slides arrive from Macron Dynamics.

Joe (left) and Ahmed (right) thinking about mounting heights of
equipment and a method of coupling the tables together during game-play.

Up close view of motor support table. The lateral motors will be mounted
horizontally on the support table.

Joe looking at the semi-finished product.

The PCBs are now mounted underneath the table and each of their multiplexer outputs has been marked and made ready to be connected to the BeagleBone. Once the BeagleBone is connected to the addressing pins of the PCBs and all the PCBs are connected together (via J3 and J4 connectors on the PCB to send power and the multiplexer address to each board), the BeagleBone will be used to automatically step through each sensing pair of LEDs/PTs along the parameter of the table and tell if there are any issues with sensors. The photos below show the interconnection of PCBs and wires coming from the output of each board to be used. This 'Z' output from the multiplexer (red wire) is used to tell the BeagleBone the location that the ball was last seen. See my earlier post about the sensing method if this is unclear.

Bryan (legs on the left), Khalil (middle), and Joe (right)
mounting the sensing boards along the bottom of the table
using 3M Command strips.

Mounted PCBs and multiplexer outputs (red wires) running
 to BeagleBone for testing the sensors.

Detailed look at where the 'Z' multiplexer output will go to the
BeagleBone. Later, there will be a hole made in the side of the table
to run the wires to the BB. 

Coming up:
1. A video of the BeagleBone output as we instruct the processor to test the sensors around the table.
2. BeagleBone motor control video.

Also, Team Foosbot will be giving a presentation on March 8th to show the latest progress to the faculty at the College of Engineering at the University of Akron. Wish us luck as crunch time rolls around!

Wires, wires, wires!

Last night, Bryan and I finished soldering one complete side of phototransistors and LEDs to the recessing blocks on the foosball table. From the pictures, it's easy to tell that we have a color scheme going on. If you read our post about the sensing boards, then you may already have some intuition about the color-coded nature of the wires.

Ahmed (left) and Bryan (right) working on a second set of
sensors along the recessing block two days ago.

With all ~400 sensors connected, it would be a daunting task to debug the system if one of the sensors isn't working. Finding that one problematic LED or phototransistor would be a nightmare. I came up with a decent algorithm for color-coding the wires to find out which one is "problematic". To debug our (16) groups of sensors, we need to first find which pair of LED/PT is in error. To accurately do this without a processor, I split the (16) groups (per board) into (4) groups and assigned each LED and phototransistor a number (from 1 to 16) associated with its position along the parameter of the table. Depending on the integer number that represents the LED/PT, there is a special color assigned to it. If it is an LED we're looking for and its number is even, said LED will have a certain color on all boards. If the LED has an odd integer associated with it, there is another distinct color assigned to it. Similarly for the phototransistors, there is an even and odd color assignment. This way, we have a 100% chance of finding which LED/PT is bad in the event of a hardware failure. Also, (16) groups are now represented with just (4) colors.

Recessing sensor block with connected LED/PT pairs.

To test, we connect the LED/PT pairs to the sensing boards (seen underneath the table in the pictures) and connect the phototransistor's pull-down resistor voltage output to an oscilloscope. Based on the address that we read, there will be a voltage output associated with it. If the voltage is at 5V, we know the LED in the pair is emitting and the phototransistor is conducting. From here, we move on to test the next pair in the set.

LEDs and phototransistors connected to
the sensing boards (underneath the table).

One completely connected side of (4) sensor sets.

That concludes this update. Later, we will program the ARM processor to test each pair by checking the voltage at each multiplexer address.

Coming up:

1. Video of connection and testing of sensing pairs on the other side of the table.

2. Video recording of testing the "kicking" motors.
3. Video recording of testing the motors responsible for lateral motion.

4. MORE UPDATES!