The Boxing Robot Project looks ahead to the future, where artificial intelligence is ubiquitous. Instead of people going to the gym, gym is taken home. Inspired by the movie Real Steel, its purpose is to design a robot that people can spar with at home. Our research in this semester mainly focuses on the boxing movements of the robot.

During iterations, we came up with different ideas to design the arm’s rotation. Originally, we planned to use servos and motors to rotate arms. But the limitation for this method is its difficulty to control the strength and speed when throwing a punch. We ended up solving the problem by installing one air cylinder on each arm. Besides that, Aaron helped us design robot body on Rhino. We laser cut the pieces and put them together. Then we encountered another problem -- connecting the upper and lower body while making sure the arms are rotating to the greatest extent. Aaron assisted us by making an animation, guiding us to design joint parts in Fusion 360.

Our goal for next semester is to make the robot smart by programming the robot to dodge punches from its opponents and punch back at the right time.