Interactive Learning Programs for Mechanical Systems
(2002)Innovation
- Abstract
- The issue of understanding how electrical and mechanical systems work and how the
components interact is not a trivial issue for most people. To help students understand
these systems and thereby increase the knowledge for the future engineers,
educational computer games may act as an important learning platform.
This project aims at aiding students in their effort to reach knowledge in the
area of how the components of an electromechanical system interact and also
how the basic laws of physics work. An attempt was made to make the
learning entertaining and as realistic as possible.
For this reason a number of MATLAB programs were created. The programs
are guiding the user through a set of Graphical User Interface environments
... (More) - The issue of understanding how electrical and mechanical systems work and how the
components interact is not a trivial issue for most people. To help students understand
these systems and thereby increase the knowledge for the future engineers,
educational computer games may act as an important learning platform.
This project aims at aiding students in their effort to reach knowledge in the
area of how the components of an electromechanical system interact and also
how the basic laws of physics work. An attempt was made to make the
learning entertaining and as realistic as possible.
For this reason a number of MATLAB programs were created. The programs
are guiding the user through a set of Graphical User Interface environments
where the user will create and design the different components of a robot.
Then the robot will be tested in a drag race and a pushing contest where the
design of the robot will decide the outcome of the tests.
The components that were included in this thesis were:
• Battery
The user will decide what cell type to use and how to connect the cells.
• Motor
The user will decide between three permanent magnet motors with
different properties.
• Transmissions
The user will design the gearbox down to the gear level and decide what
material that is best suited for the gears. It is also possible to equip the
robot with belt transmissions to gear up the torque from the motor
further.
• Mobility
The user will decide if the robot will be equipped with wheel or tracks.
To reach some understanding of how the basics of physics act when driving
the self-constructed robot, a two dimensional driving program was created.
To illustrate how to model the motion and physics of a robot equipped with
arms, two methods were used: Newton’s and Lagrange’s. When using the
equations of Newton the restriction that the motion of the arm did not affect
the robot was made. Another simplification was that the motion of the arm
was not affected by the rotation of the robot.
These simplifications were not made when using Lagrange’s equations, which
resulted in some rather large equations.
Another scenario that is treated in this thesis is impact between two robots.
When modelling this, the laws of impact were applied. The coefficient of
restitution, which is the percent of energy loss during impact, was set as a
variable.
This thesis has resulted in some programs where the user is given a possibility
to get an understanding for how some of the components of an electric and
mechanical system work and how they interact. The user will also be able to
drive a self-constructed robot in a virtual environment that behaves very
closely to the real world. Hopefully some of the work that has been put down
will be used in a future educational computer game. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1514861
- author
- Johansen, Tom and Wiedekamm, Jostein
- supervisor
- organization
- year
- 2002
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 1514861
- date added to LUP
- 2009-12-07 15:30:51
- date last changed
- 2010-02-01 14:40:06
@misc{1514861,
abstract = {{The issue of understanding how electrical and mechanical systems work and how the
components interact is not a trivial issue for most people. To help students understand
these systems and thereby increase the knowledge for the future engineers,
educational computer games may act as an important learning platform.
This project aims at aiding students in their effort to reach knowledge in the
area of how the components of an electromechanical system interact and also
how the basic laws of physics work. An attempt was made to make the
learning entertaining and as realistic as possible.
For this reason a number of MATLAB programs were created. The programs
are guiding the user through a set of Graphical User Interface environments
where the user will create and design the different components of a robot.
Then the robot will be tested in a drag race and a pushing contest where the
design of the robot will decide the outcome of the tests.
The components that were included in this thesis were:
• Battery
The user will decide what cell type to use and how to connect the cells.
• Motor
The user will decide between three permanent magnet motors with
different properties.
• Transmissions
The user will design the gearbox down to the gear level and decide what
material that is best suited for the gears. It is also possible to equip the
robot with belt transmissions to gear up the torque from the motor
further.
• Mobility
The user will decide if the robot will be equipped with wheel or tracks.
To reach some understanding of how the basics of physics act when driving
the self-constructed robot, a two dimensional driving program was created.
To illustrate how to model the motion and physics of a robot equipped with
arms, two methods were used: Newton’s and Lagrange’s. When using the
equations of Newton the restriction that the motion of the arm did not affect
the robot was made. Another simplification was that the motion of the arm
was not affected by the rotation of the robot.
These simplifications were not made when using Lagrange’s equations, which
resulted in some rather large equations.
Another scenario that is treated in this thesis is impact between two robots.
When modelling this, the laws of impact were applied. The coefficient of
restitution, which is the percent of energy loss during impact, was set as a
variable.
This thesis has resulted in some programs where the user is given a possibility
to get an understanding for how some of the components of an electric and
mechanical system work and how they interact. The user will also be able to
drive a self-constructed robot in a virtual environment that behaves very
closely to the real world. Hopefully some of the work that has been put down
will be used in a future educational computer game.}},
author = {{Johansen, Tom and Wiedekamm, Jostein}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Interactive Learning Programs for Mechanical Systems}},
year = {{2002}},
}