About The Club

"Engineering Solutions at Berkeley is a student-run, non-profit hardware engineering consulting organization that comprises the brightest mechanical engineers, designers, and makers who create cost-efficient, reliable, and high-quality solutions for our clients.

Over the course of the semester, we work with companies to creatively improve workplace efficiency, solve independent engineering challenges, and prototype and test solutions. Engineering Solutions at Berkeley provides an unparalleled opportunity for students to get hands-on project work and industry experience." (taken from website)

Project

Sentien Robotics needed an early concept design for a payload hopper system for their Hive trailer, which served as a drone hub. Our team was tasked with prototyping a payload delivery system that would continuously attach given packages to a fleet of drones coming in and out of the drone hub!

The project required collaboration among four engineers who had different areas of expertise, and we divided the project into 3 subteams: container/active funneling, ball indexing, and end-effector subteams.

I was in charge of the ball indexing subsystem alongside another engineer, who's name is Reagan (I will be sharing our work on here so I am giving credit where it's due). After becoming acquainted with Reagan, we decided to implement a skee-ball mechanism as a proof-of-concept design, addressing the packaging distribution aspect while also aiming to connect our other team members’ active funneling and end effector subsystems successfully. Below is a picture of Reagan and I!

Design

Reagan started the design for the payload-indexing system using SolidWorks and Onshape where we created a proof-of-concept design with laser-cut parts, and then transitioned to 3D printed parts.

This is the initial sketch design that he organized and illustrated beautifully!

I refined the locking mechanism design, which wrapped around the tubing system in order to keep the indexing parts in place!

Coding and Circuitry

Taking inspiration from the video below (in terms of the mechanics), I got to work on the coding and circuitry aspect of this project using Arduino IDE!

I was able to help demonstrate this mechanism with the use of universal joints, allowing rods that insert into the tube as "stop" and "go" ), which were then connected to horn adapters that were connected to a custom-printed servo horn. The use of a DS3235 35KG Coreless Stainless Steel Gear Waterproof Digital Servo proved to be essential, since it allowed for the servo horn to oscillate between 0 to 15 degrees, recreating the mechanism in the video above. It allowed the rods to enter the tube just enough to stop the balls but to quickly be removed when the horn oscillated.

Using the circuitry above, I was able to control the mechanism with the push of a button. The end goal would be for the entire system to be autonomous, but because this was a proof-of-concept design, we wanted to complete the entire prototype with functional parts before diving into more complex designs.

Final Deliverables, Full Implementation and Live Demo

Here are images of our subsystem CAD assembly, as well as how it looks like as part of the full system!

Here are the in-person pictures of our subsystem, as well as how the entire prototype came together!

Here's a short tour of the entire system before doing our live demo:

Here is our live demo!

Enjoy this picture of my engineering team, which includes our 4 engineers and our lovely Project Manager, along with Sentien Robotics corgis Piper and Watson!

Drone Hive Trailer Package Indexing Subsystem