Competitive Tilt Maze
Elecanisms - Spring 2017
Elecanisms is a mechatronics class available as a Mechanical Engineering or Electrical and Computing Engineering depth. In the class, the final project was a penny arcade game, which needed a non-trivial mechanical, electrical, and software component.
My team consisted of 4 students of varying majors, and we designed and built a competitive tilt maze. One player tilted the board by shifting their weight on a Wii Balance Board, with the goal of getting a pinball from the start to a marked finish spot at the end. The second player controlled the obstacles, turning on electromagnets at the marked targets, twisting the central feature to prevent the pinball from passing, and flipping the flippers as a last ditch resort.
I used this project as an opportunity to improve my software skills - I took this course at the same time as I was learning Python, and self-taught C for this project. Within software, my main contribution was the obstacle control.
I also contributed to game design and mechanical and electrical assembly and debugging. In the first sprint, I sourced the parts needed for the initial prototype, and designed the mounts for the servos. The other mechanical engineering student designed the attachments for the supports.
One issue we found in the initial prototype was the top board twisting around the central axis rather than tilting side to side. We determined the issue was a combination of a sloppy U-joint in the center, and hyperextention of the tilting arms. I worked with the other MechE to recalculate the necessary arm lengths, and I found a higher quality U-joint, the combination of which alleviated that mechanical problem.
​
By the end of the third and final sprint, we had a fairly polished game design, which was engaging, intuitive, and fun to play.
The website for our project can be found at http://elecanisms.olin.edu/2017/tilt/index.html.