Robot shell design

This is a short project that me and Fanny Bertilsson, a college at the ÅF Product Design Department, did in collaboration with the so called "Embedded" department at ÅF (engineers who work mostly with the technique inside products). They had made a small robot that came 2nd in the Swedish robot championships this year (2015), in the Sumo class and since it was going to be exhibited in different fairs during the autumn to promote ÅF they asked us if we could develop and produce a shell for the, at the time, shell less robot (The 3D model that can be seen on the "Sketching" image shows how the robot looked before the project). The Sumo class means that the robot is put in a small arena together with another robot and whichever machine that pushes the other one out of the ring wins. Both robots are completely autonomous and makes all the decisions without human interference. 

So we spent just a couple of days on the project and made a moodboard, some form sketching and built the design in CAD to be able to print the model in my 3D printer that I bought for my thesis project (a XYZprinting, da Vinci 1.0A). The design is inspired by bugs because they feel robust with their hard shells and sit firmly on the ground, just like the robot needs to do to be able to push out it's opponent from the ring.

Once 3D printed the shell was put on the robot, which had been programmed to be controlled by hand gestures, before it was shown at a fair for unemployed engineers, hosted by Ny Teknik, as can be seen on the fourth image. The small thing on the table is an optical hand gesture censor that is connected to the computer via USB, which in turn transmits the signals to the robot wirelessly. It was very appreciated and it felt good to show that ÅF is not only an engineering company, but also does design. ÅF is one of the biggest actors on the design market in Gothenburg, but this is not so well known get because the design department has only existed for some years and is a such small part of the big, engineer based consultancy bureau that ÅF is.

Fair at Ny Teknik, Gothenburg

A new version of the 3D Printed shell made after the fair in ÅFs new Form 2 printer. Print time around 6 hours.

Print Details