Drone Gripper

sketchfab

This is our gripper design for the Aerial Rotocraft Competition last year (Spring 2015) at Gonzaga. Jun Li, Erik Buren, and I prototyped, designed, and assembled the mechanical parts of the claw, and Max Hernandez, Luis Perez, and Sean Allen were responsible for the electronics and programming. We designed all of the red and blue parts and 3D printed them, and it worked great! We designed it so that the geared arms interacted with the internal Lego worm drive which connects to a Lego axle and gear on the top where the motor was mounted. We used Lego wheels and tires for the gripper contact points because when we made our original Lego prototype versions, they worked so well that we decided to use them in the final model. The upper and lower part of each arm had rubber bands wrapped around both above the swivel point which allowed the claw to be flexible and be able to grip objects of various shapes.