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Climby

Oct 2017 - Sep 2018
Ideasync Startathon in collaboration with PSA
Undergraduate Research Programme
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Climby started out from a hackathon (called Startathon here) in October 2017, in collaboration with PSA. The problem statement was automating crane inspection in ports. Together, we ideated and built a prototype magnetic track crawler that is able to move up and down objects made of ferromagnetic materials. As the electrical engineer, I designed the circuitry and motor control for the magnetic track crawler using Arduino and Raspberry Pi Zero.

 

We managed to impress the judges and won the PSA unboxed top pick out of more than 20 participating teams.

After the hackathon, we continue to research further on the structure of the magnetic crawler. We manage to come out with more prototypes as seen on the right-hand side. The second prototype is a two-segment drive, targetted at climbing up right-angle corners. However, it is not very effective at doing so. The third prototype consists of a chassis that recreate the right-angle concavity which manages to overcome the right-angle problem.

 

These prototypes were used to pitch to our university during a
Startup Pitch competition. With that, we manage to secure an incubation space within our university compound for us to continue designing different iterations 

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Second prototype

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Third prototype

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Second prototype rendered in Solidworks

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Third prototype rendered in Solidworks

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Our group embarked on Undergraduate Research programme (UROP) offered by our university to dive deeper into the magnetic drive system.

 

The fourth iteration was designed with the payload in mind which includes 4 x 18650 lithium power cells, LattePanda Delta, a downward facing 1080p camera for inspection, front Kinect camera and teensy 3.6. We have modified the chassis once again and raise the height level such that it does not require right-angled chassis to cross over right-angle corners. In addition, we designed a crab wheel drive system to enable the magnetic crawler to achieve omnidirectional movement.

 

The wheels are designed to fit small size magnetic cubes all around the wheel to crawl on the ferromagnetic surface.

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Throughout the entire process, I have jumped between roles and contributed as an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and software engineer. This involves designing the circuits for the prototypes, CAD the chassis using SolidWorks and to write the odometry for 2- dimension movement using C.

 

All of this could not have happened without the guidance from Timonthy, our project lead as well as the effort from the rest of the members: Tanvi, Dominic, Fariha and Jien Yi.

Fourth prototype without magnetic wheel attachment

Skills acquired/displayed

  • Electronics

  • Solidworks

  • Arduino

  • Python

  • C

Problems faced

  • Lack of knowledge in C

Solution

  • Learn generally through online resources as well as continuously applying it on the magnetic crawler

©2018 by Xiang Qian

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