Catch-Bot: "The Robot That Catches Balls"

thingiverse

This is a robot that can catch the balls you throw at it, using computer vision. It uses two PS3 Eye cameras to triangulate the ball's position, and moves a Cartesian coordinate robot accordingly. The robot and its software was developed by a team of four high school students, in two and a half weeks, at Rose Hulman's "Operation Catapult" Engineering program. It won the Best Project Award. The robot's design was inspired by the mechanics of generic 3D printers and CNC machines, but was designed fully from scratch. Note: The included STL file is a CAD design of all the pieces composing the robot, combined together. Some of the shown pieces are 3D printed (the mounts, brackets, etc.), some are laser cut (the frame), and some are purchased (steppers, smooth rods, etc.). More information can be found here: https://barancode.com/projects/catchbot/