CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
24 February 2005
Implementation Investments
Licom Software Keeps Students On The Ball
Advanced manufacturing software from Licom Systems is helping students at the University of Warwick to achieve their goals in more ways than one!
The company's AlphaCAM system has been well-established on campus for several years as an easy to use CNC programming tool. Now a recent upgrade has extended its capabilities to provide a valuable teaching aid within the University's School of Engineering. What's more, it is also playing a central role in the production of robot football players designed and developed by a team of undergraduates as part of a fourth year MEng degree project.
The challenge brings together a multi-skilled group of students from a range of engineering disciplines with the aim of producing a five-strong team of robots that operate independently, but like real players, can work as a team, recognize rules and score goals against other sides.
According to project leader, Jarl Cornell: "In theory, a bunch of robots kicking a football about sounds quite a simplistic idea. But in practice, bringing together the different engineering skills-such as vision, mechanics, electronics and telecommunications-is an extremely complex task."
In effect, each robot consists of a fully autonomous 100 mm cube, which not only receives its instructions from the team's host computer by Bluetooth or RF link, but must also contain all its power and drive train components on board. At the heart of each unit is an aluminum chassis, which incorporates various cavities to house the necessary controls, wheels and drive equipment. Other features include a machined scoop at the front of the robots, which is used to guide the football-normally an orange golf ball-towards goal.
Workshop supervisor, Paul Grimley explains how the latest Licom software has helped to reduce manufacturing times. "AlphaCAM has been in use at the University for more than 10 years. It has always proved to be a very intuitive, easy-to-use and effective programming system. However, a recent upgrade to Version 5, in conjunction with the installation of two Deckel Maho CNC machining centers, has given us a highly productive 5-axis machining capability."
"Each robot's chassis is machined from extruded aluminum," he continues. "Previously, all six sides would have to be machined separately. Now, the bottom face is prepared and then bolted down onto a purpose-designed fixture, enabling the remainder of the cube to be machined in a single cycle.
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