Team Enginyte has tackled the task of building an industrial grade combat robot! We believe that this project was perfect in demonstrating what we’ve learned through Lafayette’s mechanical engineering curriculum as well as challenging us to expand our knowledge of mechatronics. Over the course of our senior year we designed, planned, wired, welded, built, coded, and put together all of our engineering expertise in order to finish this project. While it has been a long year with many difficulties relating to this project, there have also been many causes for celebration and success. We invite you to explore this website that showcases our journey of building a combat bot.
Educational Endeavors:
Building a combat bot was a significant undertaking that required us to apply knowledge from many of our mechanical engineering courses such as: employing our experience in material science to select the most appropriate medium for various components, utilizing control systems and mechatronics to ensure we could in fact control the movement and actions of the combat bot, and manipulating different instrumentation and data acquisitions to ensure our bot is functioning in an expected manner. While this project challenged our knowledge beyond what we had learned in our engineering curriculum, we used our excitement to expand our engineering horizons. New knowledge was acquired in almost every step of the project including but not limited to prototyping, designing, testing, coding, and component select. More in-depth information of our educational expansion on these subjects can be found throughout the website, and in our “How to Build a Battle Bot” page.
Since this project was not based solely on engineering, we had to develop team working skills like listening, collaboration, and leadership. We also learned project management skills including budgeting, time management, and safety by learning from our professors, our research, and one another which ensured our success in this project and as a team. A more specific analysis of this can be found in our “About the Team” page.
Process to Project Idea:
Team Enginyte started as seven unlikely undergraduate students who struggled to find a common engineering interest. We spent the first several weeks learning each other’s strengths, weaknesses and interests, and searched for problems we felt we could solve together. After weeks of hoping to solve challenges facing medical professionals, we shifted gears to build a combat robot.
This was quite the jump from our previous interests. While there are many problems bioengineering could solve, we wanted to focus on an issue that impacted our own engineering community. A common problem we had all encountered was the belief that engineering had to be a difficult and serious endeavor. This belief can lead to burnout and a loss of passion among engineering students. With our project, we hoped to demonstrate that engineering is fun and to reignite the passion for STEM within ourselves, our peers, and others beyond the Lafayette community.
Problem Objective, Metrics, and Constraints:
Within each battle bot competition, there are multiple levels and divisions in which a combat bot can fight. Each of these comes with their own rules and guidelines for weight, safety measures, and speed. Our ultimate goal was to battle in a competition, so we had to adhere to the rules of the competition and class we selected. More information on our objectives, constraints, and functional requirements can be found in our “Problem Space” and “Functional Requirements” page.
Final Poster Presentation:
This poster outlined the problem statement of the project and our work with young students introducing many of them to the field of engineering and beginner CAD software.
This poster analyzed the combat bot’s fight using images from the livestream found below.
This poster analyzed the team’s process through examining expectations and realities of the project.
Enginyte Battle Blog
The “Enginyte Battle Blog” was a fun and informal way for our team to characterize our week-by-week tasks. As the competition drew closer, it was important to remain organized, but also to remember our main motivation for the project itself! Although the Battle Blog has sadly come to an end, previous entries can be viewed on the “Battle Blog Archive” page.