Robosapien X Essays Example

Team Members’ Names

Executive Summary 3
1.1. Introduction 4
1.1. Team Summary 4
1.3. Scope & Limitations 5
2.0. Design Approach and Results 5
2.1. Customer Needs 5
2.2. Functional Model Results 6
2.2.1. Black Box Model and functional model 7
Figure 1: Black box model 7
Figure 2: Hypothesized functional model 7
2.3. Disassembly 8
2.4. Bill of Materials 8
2.5. Subtract and Operate 9
2.6. Quality Functional Deployment 12

Appendix A: QFD 16

Appendix B: Redesign Sketch Method 17
Executive Summary
Our group purposed to carry out reverse engineering of RobosapienX, whereby we derived and implemented a list of alterations to make the product have a better user experience. The RobosapienX is a remote controlled toy robot that has a wide range of motion, many sensors, and a pre-programmed personality. Customer interviews were conducted, with responses analyzed and compiled into a list of customer needs. Completion of the reverse-engineering methods has given us insight as to how we can improve this product to fulfill the customers’ needs. By applying methods used by professional engineers, our team was able to quickly and efficiently reverse engineer our product and propose solutions for an improved robot.
Introduction
The groundbreaking work of this project began by collecting reviews from customers about our product, and this gave us an idea on the problems the robot had that we needed to improve. Most of the customers noticed the same problems in the robot such as; the infrared signal made it hard to control the robot, easier way to control the movement of the robot, the robot was so loud and could nott be turned off by the remote, and hard to turn while moving. As a group we came up with some ideas to solve these problems in order to improve the robot and satisfy the customer needs. We chose to have radio or Bluetooth communication rather than infrared. Also having joysticks for arms/movement would make it easier to control the movement of the robot. Having the ability to shut off or reduce volume using the remote to control the volume of the robot and turning it off using the remote control. Finally,improved turning while walking using the remote itself to turn it would solve our last problem.
1.1. Team Summary
Team 3 was composed by three mechanical engineers; Sean stone, Mason Jesionowski and Mohammad Alfadhli. In this project we will use our skills to work as a team in order to complete all of the project requirements on time and in the best manner possible. Sean would be useful in planning what to do for the team, while Mohammad is willing to work on whatever his team needs him to work on.  Mason is project driven and his flexible thinking skills will come in handy incase of problems for he can think outside the box. Knowing the skills that each member will bring to the team is insightful because we will assign tasks that suits their skills 1.2. Motivation
As a team, we commenced the project by discussing the product we wanted to work on. We all agreed on having something unique that included both mechanical and electrical engineering. We chose the robot because we thought it could be helpful in daily life for both children and older people.
1.3. Scope & Limitations
We chose Robosapien X because it could be used for a couple of things. Firstly, it could be used as an entertainment product for children. Secondly, it can be used to help older people, by assisting them to do some simple tasks such as picking small objects and bringing it to the person. The time limit to complete the improvement of the robot was five weeks.
2.0. Design Approach and Results
2.1. Customer Needs
In order to understand and to know the customers’ needs regarding our product, as a group we did some surveys. In these surveys we asked fourteen people about what they thought of the product and how to improve it. Nine were males aged from 20-23 and five were also males aged from 30-45. The nine males aged from 20-23 were all college students while the other five had mechanical, electrical, physics, and science degrees. After gathering and analyzing the surveys, as a group we discovered a very mutual agreement from customers at to what should be improved. We ranked those needs from 1-5, five being the most important.  It was obvious that having a radio or Bluetooth communication rather than infrared ws mandatory because it scored a 5. Secondly, having joysticks for the arms and movement was also important as it was given a 4. Having both the ability to shut off or reduce volume and Improved turning with wheels or treads were given a 4, because they were very desired needs, however ones that did not affect the overall functionality quite as much. Other ideas such as having different voices, jumping, and the ability to turn while walking were rated lower because they were more novelty needs. Customer needs gave us an idea on what to focus on and what to change in our product.
2.2. Functional Model Results
Having a functional model gives an idea of the steps we are doing to understand how our product works. There are two parts of the functional model, which are black box model and hypothesized functional model. First we start with the black box model, which identifies overall functions and the input and output flows. The other part is the hypothesized functional model which a graphical description of the functions (or operations) a product must perform on input flows to transform them into desired output flows.
2.2.1. Black Box Model and functional model
Before doing the hypothesized functional model (Figure 2), as a group we did the Black Box model (Figure 1), which helped us identify the overall function. It gave us a general idea on what energies and signals we were using in the product.  We noticed that there were five key functions in our product. These functions are; Electricity, Human energy, Hand, Remote, and weight. After doing the functional model, we understood how our product worked. It also helped give us an idea on what we were facing during the disassembly process.
Figure 1: Black box model
Figure 2: Hypothesized functional model
2.3. Disassembly
The disassembly of the Robosapien X proved to be much more in depth than what our Team hypothesized. The amount of internal components, as seen in Figure 3 - Bill of Materials, is many times over what our team believed to be inside. This underestimation of internal components caused our progress to slow dramatically as it required much longer disassembling and creating the bill of materials.  In our disassembly, many of the parts are mirrored, such as shoulder servos, wrist plates, and legs, so instead of going through the disassembly of one leg, we show one being disassembled and let the reader understand that it is the exact same process for the other leg in an effort to stay brief and on topic. In total, we have come up with 34 photos with overlaid text explaining how to disassemble the product entirely. This showed us that the robot was complicated and had many different screws an parts in it.
2.4. Bill of Materials
Our extensive bill of materials (Figure 3) and underestimation of the amount of parts makes our team believe that this robot could be simplified drastically with only a few changes. The Robosapien X has six different types of screws that vary marginally, which suggests that they could easily be replaced by only 2 different types,½” and  ½” flathead. In addition to this, it seems as if many screws could be removed completely, replaced only by guides in the cases to hold components in place. We came up with a numbering scheme to keep our BOM well organized and for easy referencing. Each part along with its assembly is numbered in ascending order with an extra reference for a subassembly. Ex: 1.2 is assembly 1, part 2 while 2.1.3 is assembly 2, subassembly 1, part 3. Our team then came up with a descriptive name for each part for later use in our assembly model, and to make our disassembly instructions more clear. Based on our hypothesized functional model, and observations during assembly, we were able to determine the function that each part contributes to the overall operation of the robot. Colors, material, dimensions, and manufacturing process was noted as well for each part. Screw quantities within each assembly/subassembly are referenced separately so that re-assembly is straightforward.
2.5. Subtract and Operate
During the disassembly process, as a group, we got to know the function of each part of the product . We started with outer housing at first and we found out that the black plate was to protect and hold the internal body components. After removing it the arm movement wasn’t stable. After that we removed the speaker housing and the speaker/wire. The speaker housing was to secure the speaker and after removing it the speaker rattled around but the speaker/wire’s function was to convert electricity to sound and after removing it there was no sound. Then we removed the power button, which forced us to use a toll in order to power on. After that we removed the screw, 4 spring holders, 2 springs, and 2 small springs. After removing them there was no smooth arm movement.  Finally we removed the chest plate, which was to protect the internal body components, and the arm movement was unstable.
After finishing from the outer housing we started on removing the arm assembly. We first removed 2 5/16” screws and the shoulder wasn’t secured. Then we removed 9 1/2” screw and the result was that the arms weren’t secured. Then we also removed the wrist plate and the rear wrist plate, which were to protect internal wrist components, and after removing them the wrists weren’t secured. Removing the arm plate and rear upper arm plate resulted in the shoulder not being secured and they were to protect the internal arm component. After removing the servomechanism bar piece, servo mount, servomechanism bar, and the servomechanism it resulted in no finger movements. After that we removed the circuit board screw ¼” which was to fasten circuit board and it resulted it the circuit board to rattle around. Then we removed the rotation sensor screw and the arm/fingers didn’t stop actuating and rotation sensor/ wire resulted in the same thing. The arm wiring harness was to transport electricity and the arm servo was to convert EE to ME, rotate arm, and retract fingers. The process of removing them resulted in arm inoperational.
In the process of removing finger subassembly we removed the 3/8’ screw and after removing it the fingers could not close; the same result happened after removing the finger bars. After removing the fingers the robot could not grasp objects, and removing the finger housing made the fingers not secured. The torso assembly started with disassembling the screw covers which was redundant because it resulted in nothing.  Removing the 5/8” screw, front torso plate, and rear torso plate resulted in making it unstable.
In the leg assembly we disassembled six 3/8” screw s, upper outer leg case, ½’ screw, ¼’ flathead screw and all of them were redundant. After that we disassembled the foot spring and we started with 5 3/8’ flathead screws which was a battery cover to battery housing and the battery cover was to secure the batteries.  Then we removed 6 ½’ flathead screws, lower outer leg case, and lower inner leg case. After removing all of these components it showed that all of these components were redundant and resulted in no changes in the product. After that we removed the springs which prevents over rotation of legs and foot , long and short lever arm which rotated the foot.  Then we removed the crew plate, small brass washers, large brass washers, and plastic spacers. Removing these components resulted in the product not walking. Removing the main foot case and battery housing showed that both are redundant. The front/rear bumper sensor purpose was to prevent the product from colliding with external objects. Removing it resulted in not stopping after colliding with objects.
After that we moved on the process of disassembling the main body. We first removed five ¼” screws which was to fasten circuit board to front inside plate which resulted in circuit board rattling around. Removing 5 ¼’’ flathead screws, 4 3/8” flathead screws, 2 springs, and 2 spring joints made the product lean to one side and it couldn’t walk. The 17 3/8” screws were redundant and removing the upper leg servo wouldn’t let the product move too. Both wide diameter screw ¼” and wide diameter screw ¼” were both redundant. Removing 2 small diameter flathead screws that fastened the springs made lean to one side. The wide diameter flathead screw was to fasten torso servo and after removing it the product could not work. The long springs that prevent over rotation of arms resulted in no smooth arm movement. Shoulder ring were redundant and shoulder rotators that guide arm rotation resulted it in shoulders not rotating. Front inside plate was redundant and torso servo that convert electrical to mechanical energy resulted in the product not moving.  Also the back inside plate was redundant and the removing of the shoulder servo resulted in shoulders not rotating.
The final part of the disassembly was the head movement regulator. The ¼’ flathead screw is to fasten right angle pieces and the small springs was to assist the rotation of the head. The servo guide’s purpose is to guide the rotation of the head and the right angle piece was to link right angle pieces to servo guides. The guide piece was to link servo guides, the channel piece was to guide servo guides, and the rack and pinion was to convert rotation to side movement. All of these components resulted in head not rotating.
2.6. Quality Functional Deployment
Engineering requirements are derived through a Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) approach, so as we group we did the QFD to translate the customer needs (requirements), market research, and technical benchmarking data. So first we needed to arrange our engineering requirements and our customer needs. Then as a group we started relating our customer needs to the engineering requirements. Our customer needs are: More understandable commands with larger text, Joysticks for arms/movement, multitasking, Bluetooth receiver, jump, pick up objects easier, different voices, ability to shut off or reduce volume, different colors or styles, different attachments for arms, improved turning, human-like turning, and the ability to turn while walking. To relate those customers needs with the engineering requirements we had three numbers 1,3,9. 1 means that there is a weak relationship, 3 means there is medium relationship and 9 means there is a strong relationship. More understandable commands with larger text got a 1 in capacity because it would take space and a 9 in button size because the button has to be bigger and the text on the buttons have to be bigger. Joysticks for arms and movement got a 9 in voltage and current because both needs electricity which means needing both the voltage and current and it got a 3 in resistance and speed because more power needs to be used and the joysticks would make the movement faster. Multitasking had a strong relationship with wavelength and frequency because this would include the use of the Bluetooth, which uses more signals, and had a medium relationship to discharge rate because multitasking means using more energy, which leads to more use of battery. All three of Jump, ability to turn while walking and improved turning had a medium relationship to voltage, current because all three of them had to use more electricity. Also 3 in resistance and speed because the use of all three of them would need more power and it should understand the commands quickly for it to respond quickly. Picking objects easier got a 3 in voltage and current because it needed a little bit use of electricity but different colors or styles got 9 in voltage and current because moving and changing directions means using more electricity, which is the same for the ability to shut off or reduce volume. It also had a medium relationship with resistance and speed because it needs power to shut off and control the volume and it needs to get the commands of shutting of and controlling the volume quickly. Different color or style had a strong relationship with voltage and current because having different colors uses a lot of electricity. Finally different attachments for arms had a medium relationship with the capacity because it means that the product will need more space. After that we started calculating the importance rating and the following table shows the ratings:

We derived importance rating by multiplying the relation with the customer weight. After that we started looking for competitors to evaluate our product. So we chose those three competitors: The WowWeeMiP Robot RC Robot, kid galaxy robot data, and the RC dancing robot. After choosing the competitors we read the customer reviews and based on that we rated them from 1 to 5.

The purpose of this project was to reverse engineer and redesign the product to improve it. Following all of the reverse engineering methods helped us as a group to identify the problems of the product and find solutions that would be helpful. Infrared signal is inadequate because it made it hard to control the robot so as a group we will change that to Bluetooth communication to make it easier to control and easier to give commands. Another problem we faced was that we needed an easier way to control the movement of the robot and we believe that having joysticks for movement would be the solution for that. In addition, the product was so loud and it did not have the ability to shut off so we believe that we should have a volume control on the remote and the ability to shut off using the remote. It was hard for the robot to turn while moving, thus improving the turning while walking using either the remote or even using the joysticks would be the solution for that problem. Finally, while disassembling the product we found out that it had to nine screws and it had different types of screw. So the solution would be using only two types of screws which are the ¼’ flathead and a ¼’ regular screw. We also can have slots for the stuff inside the robot instead of having too many screws that we do not need.
4.0. Appendices
Appendix A: QFD
Appendix B: Redesign Sketch Method