QBotix Internship

For the summer of 2014 I did an internship at a robotics startup called QBotix for 3 months. QBotix aimed to lower the cost of solar power generation by making solar panels track the motion of the sun throughout the day. The conventional way is to have solar panels mounted on motorized 2-axis trackers, but instead QBotix was trying to cut costs by having one robot that traverses to each non-motorized tracker and adjust the position of the tracker by engaging its motor to the tracker.

My main role as a mechanical engineering intern was to test the fatigue life for the component that transferred torque between the tracker and the robot. This was done using flexible shafts in order to be compliant to the misalignment that would happen between the tracker and the robot. Throughout the summer, I made a handful of rigs that rotated the shaft under various conditions to accelerate fatigue and innovate ways to extend the lifetime of the shaft. All of the rigs were controlled with an Arduino I programmed to automate the process. I typically machined small parts on the mill & lathe unless I needed multiples or involved special tools.

Aside from fatigue life testing, I also worked on side-projects related to increasing the reliability of the flexible shaft. The photo below shows a mechanism I have designed in which the robot is able to detect if the paddles at the end of the flexible shaft has successfully engaged with the prongs on the tracker.