Design | Theodor Chakhachiro

Autonomous Tree Planting Drone

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 08:11:38 +0200

2019 has witnessed an outburst of several wildfires across the globe. From the devastating fires in Australia, California and the Amazon rainforests, to the blazes that destroyed the forests of Lebanon and burned an estimated 3,700 acres of green land during October. All these fires are contributing to the rapidly rising deforestation around the world.

According to The Guardian, deforestation in Brazil – home of the Amazon rainsofrest – has hit the highest annual level in a decade. More than 7,700 square kilometers of rainforest were burnt down during the first nine months of 2019. This represents an 85% increase over the amount of deforestation from the same period in 2018. As such, with this issue becoming more urgent and pressing every day, new methodologies need to be developed to combat deforestation and mitigate its devastating effects. Traditional reforestation techniques rely on workers to plant trees or seedlings. Nevertheless, this technique is slow and expensive, and workers don’t typically last for more than a season or two due to the physical intensity required by this job. Moreover, fire outbreaks which are hard to contain typically take place in remote areas that are inaccessible by humans. As such, for our final year project, we propose an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle capable of planting seedlings in remote areas.

The proposed system is composed of the following components:

A drone that flies over the remote area to be planted
A machine learning algorithm that identifies a space within the area that could be planted
A feeding mechanism that stores the seedlings and feeds them to the planting mechanism
A planting mechanism that digs in the soil and disposes the seedling appropriately

Several constraints are imposed by this system among which are that the drone must be capable of planting 10 seedlings on one charge and identifying planting locations with an accuracy of at least 90%. Furthermore, the vehicle must be environmentally friendly and easy to setup and operate. The progress accomplished so far includes conducting a thorough literature review on currently available systems for planting seeds or seedlings, in addition to proposing several design alternatives for the planting mechanism, setting up the guidelines for collecting the dataset for the machine learning algorithm and choosing the appropriate vehicle for the project from several options proposed.

AUB SuperMileage Vehicle Power Transmission Gear System

Wed, 08 May 2019 08:11:38 +0200

In this project, it is intended to design a two chain sprocket mechanisms to transmit power from the motor to the wheel of the AUB super mileage vehicle. A two-stage gear system was excluded because of the dimensional limitations of the design. Also, belts are not efficient because of the significant power loss. The vehicle is required to accelerate and then cruise at 30 mph at a supplied angular velocity of 3600 rpm. It is also required to accelerate rapidly to reach 3600 rpm in a short time and that is achieved by more frequent burns until a constant burn is maintained. Based on weight, cost, fatigue strength, and contact stresses, a material is to be selected. Stainless steel was found to have the perfect specification for the application. Moreover, the material index proposed should be optimized to incorporate dimensional considerations (width of gears etc.. . . ). Using SolidWorks, the chain-sprocket systems were mounted over the assembly of the motor. In the following week, finite element analysis (ANSYS) will be used in order to enhance the design and compensate for stress concentrations.

Dyslexic Tailored Piano

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 08:11:38 +0200

The Build It Weekend is a national university-level hardware hackathon, the goal is to design, build and program a working prototype of a project that is both innovative and useful.

My team and I decided to help dyslexic people learn to play the piano. Our prototype helps the user by replacing written piano notes with flashing LED mounted piano keys to designate the appropriate key to press in order to complete the musical. The piano also features a game mode most relevant in tutoring cases, where the instructor can play a specific song on the piano which will then teach it to the student by segmentation of the keynotes.

Formula One Car

Sat, 15 Dec 2018 08:11:38 +0200

Manufacturing of a scaled down Formula One Car using CNC, drilling, milling, turning and laser cutting machines

Retractable Roof Stadium

Sun, 20 May 2018 08:11:38 +0200

For our Mechanics of Machines project, we are required to design and construct a retractable roof. Our goal is to design a roof that:

Uses Shape Memory Alloys
Takes 5 seconds to open then 5 seconds to close
Is as lightest as possible
Can be constructed at the least possible cost
Has a large extended area compared to the retracted area

However, there are some constraints on the design which include:

It must have 20 cm elevation
It can’t be supported from the middle
The size of the roof should be 625 cm2; however, the overall size of the design (including the support) should not exceed 1600 cm2 when expanded.

Our design consists of 6 triangular panels, each connected to a base panel using a hinge represented by a pin in a slot on our Solid Works model. Each of these base panels are attached to the ground using pins, around which they oscillate. Every two triangles are connected together from the top using three dimensional hinges; giving us a total of three door system working simultaneously. Upon activation using a shape memory alloy, the expansion starts from the middle of the roof where the panels oscillate until the roof is opened. This is clearly visualized in the SolidWorks model attached in the report. For the material of the roof, we will be using Plexiglas because it is a strong, tough, and lightweight material; moreover, it has a low cost.