Dueling Robot Hardware Info

When starting this project, we began by searching for a nerf gun that fit our criteria. We decided on the gun in the above image because of it's small size, electronic trigger, and firing range. The condensed size was important to us because it meant for a smaller moment (and MOI) for the 'yaw' and 'pitch' motors to overcome and rotate the gun. This way we only needed one stage for the gears. We also wanted an electronically-controlled trigger so we wouldn't have to design another mechanical mechanism to fire the gun.

To rotate the turret about the z-axis, we utilized the ammmo-belt/feeder of the original gun as a base, both for aesthetics and functionality, as the feeder had internal gear teeth already, so it provided us a ring gear that we could rotate. To rotate this ring gear, we designed (in Solidworks) and 3D-printed a base. This base acted as the bottom half of our ball bearing - to allow easy rotation of the turret - and hold our yaw motor.

To control the pitch of the turret, we found the center of mass of the stripped nerf gun and drilled a hole through it for a metal rod (to act as a shaft). We then designed and 3D-printed a component to act as a pivot joint for the gun, as well as hold the pitch motor and connect the entire assembly to the ring gear and base. To control the pitch movement we designed and laser cut an acrylic gear (to match the given gear on the motor), which we then attached to the nerf gun using screws.

For the firing mechanism, we connected the wires that were previously connected to the guns trigger to the GPIO pins on our board. We also designed and printed a small nerf bullet magazine for the gun that uses a servo motor to push a bullet forward for the flywheels to catch and shoot it.