A telescoping-lift competition robot designed for MIT's 2.007 Pachinko-themed game board.

Objective. In 2.007, students design and fabricate a robot to complete tasks on a themed game board. The 2020 board drew on Pachinko arcades — collecting balls into target areas, placing a square peg, and more — culminating in a timed points competition.

Solution. I designed a robot for a set of lifting tasks. Its main mechanism was a multi-stage telescoping lift tailored to raise a 2.55 kg weighted beaver to a maximum height of 92 cm, actuated by a pulley system on a gear-reduced winch at the rear. It ran on the allowed 7.4 V and was loosely modeled after construction-site forklifts. Early in the semester I also built a separate ball-pushing robot to rapidly prototype plow designs inspired by skid-steer loaders, settling on the best performer.

COVID cut the semester short before I could finish the build or compete, so I refined the CAD assembly and went deeper on mechanical analysis — weight distribution to prevent tipping and enable ramp traversal, plus power analysis, required motor torque and tension, and winch-diameter sizing.