Background
This project was completed in fall of 2020 through the Robotics Club at Tufts University. The club hosted a battle bots competition, where students formed teams of four and spent the majority of the semester designing, testing and building a battle bot.
My team decided on a design incorporating a spinning weapon and a two wheel drive train. The control was powered by a Raspberry Pi and a video game controller. The weapon system was entirely separate from the locomotion, as it required higher voltage, and a PWM based communication was already in place.
Execution
I managed the design of the weapon system with parts largely sourced from drone hardware. The motor driving the weapon was a high voltage, high current brushless motor designed to power drones with 7 inch propellers. I had a spare electronic speed controller (ESC), flight controller, and receiver that I was able to implement to power and control the motor. A separate lithium polymer (LiPo) battery was used to supply the high voltage and meet the current demands. A standard drone radio was used to control the weapon.
To convert the motors rotation to the weapon, a GT2 timing belt was used along with the appropriate gears. The weapon assembly was mounted on an 8mm aluminum shaft that spins within two skateboard bearing mounted at the top and bottom of the housing. The weapon itself was constructed out of an aluminum extrusion.