The Mighty Morphin Tower Arrangers are:

Chris Barlow

Darren Lewis

& Ted the Robot

About Us

The Mighty Morphin Tower Arrangers are a team entering into the competition, Eurobot 2009: Temples of Atlantis (see www.eurobot.org for details).

Darren Lewis and Chris Barlow are both BSc Engineering Product Design students from Middlesex University in North London, UK.

Although the task for this year's competition is a complex one, the Tower Arrangers' philosophy is to use as few moving parts as possible, and to use natural forces wherever they are available. This should result in an economical, reliable system designed to score a realistic number of points match after match.

This site will follow the team's progress from initial design to final build and our progress through the competition itself.

The Contest

"Eurobot is an amateur robotics contest open to groups of young people from around the world, organised in teams."

"The aims of the contest are to favour the public interest in robotics and encourage hands-on practice of science by young people. Eurobot is intended to take place in a friendly and sporting spirit."

"More than a simple championship for young people or a competition, Eurobot is a friendly opportunity to unleash technical imagination and exchange ideas, know-how, hints and
engineering knowledge around a common challenge. Creativity and interdisciplinary is necessary. Eurobot values fair play, solidarity, creativity and sharing of technical knowledge,
whether it is across technical realisations or project management."

"Eurobot takes place in Europe, but is open to teams from other continents. Countries with more than three teams interested in participating must organise a national qualification in order to select the three teams which will participate to Eurobot finals."

[www.eurobot.org, 2008-2009]

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Rebuild








During the second and third weeks of the Easter break (13th to 22nd April), the team rebuilt the entire robot with new parts. (Before to the left and after photos are below).

The laser cut MDF which provides the different levels was painted off-white.

The MDF parts that make up the claw were remade in white, opal acrylic; this reduced the friction on the guide rails.

The lintel mechanism was remade in laser cut white acrylic for strength and accuracy.

The PTFE casters were redesigned to be more adjustable; so as they ware down they can be moved, allowing the back of the robot to maintain the same height.

Poor quality micro switches were replaced with industrial standard switches.

The tapered shape at the front is widened allowing more room for error when collecting column elements.

Last but not least, the guide rails, track and vertical encoder was extended. This now gives the claw a 50mm higher lift. The team plan to use this to place 2 extra column elements on top of their original tower. This will raise the total points per match from 29 to 42.

Last few jobs are
- The pull cord
- Obstacle avoidance
- 90 second shut down timer
- Fine tuning all programs