Introduction

The goal of this project was to develop a batting robot which can hit a ball to a target held by a user. To achieve our goal, we did the following:

setup up and configured the motors and sensors on the double pendulum
built a ball dropping mechanism

built a sensing system to determine the target's height
developed software to control the hardware with low latency
built a model for the system’s dynamics
experimented with varying initial configurations to discover ball’s final location
developed a system to determine batting plan given the target height

We have found similar robots from other universities designed to hit a ball. For example, a robot developed at CMU with several degree of freedoms can imitate a human’s batting motion. Another robotic manipulator developed at Univ. of Tokyo is able to capture and predict a ball’s motion with high speed camera to hit a ball robustly. Comparing with these projects, what makes our project interesting is that we are concerned about the trajectory of the ball after we hit it.

By knowing the impact dynamics between our robot and the ball in a possible future project we could develop and robot partner to play sports with. Baxter could possible be incorporated in a future project. Also the lessons learnt from developing the low latency control software and binary protocols could be used in many future real world projects. The dynamics developed for the double pendulum could be useful for future projects on our hardware.