Designing for Robustness

Electrical system design to minimize the number of faults

Everywhere there are motors, or sensors, or cameras, or lights, there must be wires connecting them to the base of the robot. These wires, if they are severed or they short or a connection comes loose, will leave sections of the robot without power and not operational.

This is step one of designing for robustness- protect wires. This involves coming up with the best way to route the wires such that they do not interfere with moving components, and using wire protection resources such as cable sheath or chain. Examples of wire protection resources are listed here: (link).

But this is also in colab with the CAD team, because not incorporating electrical feasibility into design will cause many issues. As I mentioned previously, our robot the 2025 season used a 3 stage elevator, and needed two separate cable chains to connect all three stages to the base of the robot, followed by a stretch of cable chain to transmit the wires over a wrist. The location, and motion, of these wire stretches were carefully thought out such that they would not interfere with other parts. There are plenty of videos online of what can happen when a cable chain gets caught, and explodes.