The Sector Sweeper is a semi-autonomous discus retrieval bot, designed to pick up and store a track and field discus. There are currently no options available that allow for discus retrieval without having someone in the sector to pick up the discus, possibly putting them in harm’s way.

After a throw, a user will remotely drive the Sector Sweeper to the discus, at which point the autonomous mode takes over. The robot locates the discus using OpenCV and aligns itself to being collection. Once collected, the Sector Sweeper switches back to remote control mode, and the user can drive the robot back to the throwing circle.

As the collection subsystem lead, I was in charge of designing and building the combine harvester-like rotating drum on the front of the Sector Sweeper. This successfully pushes the discus up the small internal ramp and into the storage area. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the partially remote nature of the semester, I was also in charge of machining the bulk of our parts, as well as assembling the entire final product. I worked very closely with the movement and storage subsystem leads to adjust their CAD models and design the Sector Sweeper with manufacturability in mind.

This is an example of a full system test of the Sector Sweeper, taken from a video that I made to describe the process (which can be found here). The Sector Sweeper was voted “Best Overall Design” among my Electromechanical System Design capstone class, as well as “Best Design” out of all College of Engineering capstone projects across all majors at the Carnegie Mellon Design Expo.