Coin Picking Robot

The Challenge

To design, build, and program a robot that independently detects and retrieves coins around a predefined perimeter created by a wire carrying an AC current. It should be battery operated and pulls coins with a self-made electromagnet. The robot should be able to retrieve a total of twenty coins amongst nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies, and toonies. The project is to be done in a group five.

Building the Robot

The robot was built by splitting up tasks among the group members. After completing these tasks, we integrated all the parts together and tested the functionality of the robot.

The tasks were as follows:  Coin-Picking Assembly, Perimeter Detector, Servo Motors and Electromagnet, and the H-Bridge with Optocouplers and MOSFETS.


Gathering Data

There were three primary sets of data that needed to be collected accurately for the robot to work as intended:

What I learned

This project gave me a deeper understanding of working with microcontrollers and helped me learn how to work with more complex circuits such as H-Bridges and Electromagnets. It helped me improve my uses of the engineering design process: generating the idea, implementing solutions, evaluating them, and iterating until the solutions are optimized.