These ELM seniors can’t get enough soccer during the regular season, so they started a Foosball club on campus. To tie their passions in with their capstone projects, they wanted to build a foosball playing robot. No, you won’t be facing off against a T-800. Instead, a Pixy-2 camera will detect the ball movement and motors will control the speed and reaction of the poles.
In week 4, we caught up with the group as they were discussing how to power the linear motion of the poles. Harrison is heading up this part of the project and discussed the benefits and drawbacks of both pneumatics and electronic motors. The former will be more of a mechanical build while motors will depend more on the electronic programming capabilities of the team.
Hunter is working on how the robot will track the ball. A camera watches for a certain color (in this case, light green) and can capture 60 readings per second. An Arduino does the calculations to figure out where the ball will be next, and the poles will respond accordingly.
Warrior Table Soccer has generously donated one table to Vermont Tech for the project team to work on and run tests. When they arrive, the real fun will begin.