Mechanical

To use the analogy of a human soccer team, the mechanical team’s task is to make better soccer players. That is, players with higher levels of individual skill that can be used together to form a strong team. Several of the skills essential to human soccer players such as agility, speed, ball handling, and shooting/passing power and accuracy are also important to robot soccer and are elements of our robots that we are trying to build and improve.

The sub-team is composed of students from mechanical engineering, integrated engineering, engineering physics, and any other UBC student excited by robot soccer. We strive to create an environment for all our members to constantly improve and acquire new skills. Junior mechanical members gain experience through training, new-member challenges, and working on projects with a senior member. These projects give new members exposure to our robots and the opportunity to learn about our robots to enable them to lead their own projects in the future.

Members on the mechanical team get exposure to a diverse range of work that converts an idea into a physical piece of our robot.

• Mechanical Design - Each team member gets involved with mechanical design using SolidWorks. Members will have the opportunity to make parts and even entire assemblies that eventually go into our physical robots. Members will gain experience in design for manufacturing (DFM) techniques and bottom-up design approaches. Members will also be involved with appropriate hardware selection and hardware procurement.

• Prototyping and Testing - Each mechanical design is validated through physical prototyping and testing. Members will have the opportunity to be trained and operate our in-house 3D printers to rapid prototype and test out their designs. Members will also have the opportunity to operate individual robots to run validation tests on their designs.

• Manufacturing and Assembly - After the completion and validation of our mechanical designs, the mechanical team is responsible for manufacturing and assembly of all the physical hardware that goes into our robots. Members will be involved with using machining tools such as the manual mill and a CNC waterjet, as well as manual work such as tapping, countersinking, and more.

The team has developed the entire robot design from scratch over its 9 year history. We continually evaluate the performance of the current fleet of robots and develop new prototype robots that lead to better results at RoboCup. Currently, the mechanical team is working on projects in the following areas: designing a new drivetrain assembly, creating a more space-efficient chipping and kicking mechanism, implementing a more robust dribbling assembly and much more.

If you are interested in designing mechanical components, physically building assemblies, or optimizing the physical capabilities of our robots, then the mechanical team is for you!