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Screen Recording 2026-05-31 110715.mp4As part of X1 Robotics at UCLA, I designed various components as the "Arms" sub-team lead for its Wall-E robot project. This robot is capable of collecting and shredding trash, and has the aesthetic features of the character from the movie! Responsible for creating linear actuator-controlled arms system, I worked within a team to design and CAD-model a system capable of gathering trash and executing animated arm movements.
The arms have 3 DOF, powered using two linear actuators and a servo motor for wrist motion.
Manufacturing
The arms system was fabricated using aluminum components to connect the actuators. As sub-team lead, I created engineering drawings and designated manufacturing tasks to team members. Most components were machined on lathes and mills.
The machined components were initially assembled on clear acrylic for visibility during testing.
While most of the external panels are acrylic, it is too brittle to be structural. We opted for aluminum for the arm system mounting point. I used a CNC router with a 1/4" end mill to fabricate the panel. A CNC was utilized instead of hand machining due to the geometry of the rounded guide slot and to speed up the manufacturing process.
Prototyping
This was a large scale project, so the design was first validated with a scaled prototype manufactured from 3D printed and acrylic components. In the original design, a deployable flap was implemented to act as a platform for holding collected trash. Through testing we found this approach inefficient and it was removed for the final version.
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