Designing a Golf Robot for the 2024 ASME Student Design Competition: Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project; Factors Impacting Decisions to Install Home Solar in Nigeria and the Nigerian Power System

A major part of any work of engineering design is interfacing: ensuring various subsystems of the project work well together. The technical project was creating a robot capable of playing nine-hole mini-golf. The STS research paper focused on the power grid in Nigeria. Although the two projects have no obvious connection, the STS research paper gave insights about ensuring multiple parts of a project interface and the importance of good communication in a group exercise. STS modes of analysis, particularly actor-network theory, provide insights about how people work together, an integral part of any socio-technical system.
The technical project was to create a robot capable of competing in the 2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Design Challenge: creating a remote-controlled robot capable of playing nine-hole mini-golf. Figure 1 shows the golf course the robot would play in.
Figure 1. The mini-golf course in the 2024 ASME Student Design Competition
The main challenges in the technical project were creating a drive system that could climb the 2x4 in the course while still being maneuverable enough to go around the obstacles, creating a putter that makes putts that would be allowed in a golf game, and creating a system of remote control. Choices in one subsystem affected design decisions in another. For example, the putter has no aiming mechanism, so all aiming was accomplished by maneuvering the robot to line up with the shot. This requires a control system that is sensitive and has low latency (the time from when a signal is sent to when the robot acts on it). It also requires a drive system that has a small turning radius (or even better, can turn in place). To accomplish our goals, we decided on a spring-loaded putter, a tank tread drive, and Bluetooth control via connection to an iPhone app.
In my STS research, I studied the power grid in Nigeria. My prospectus’s STS proposal was about the decision to choose photovoltaic vs. concentrated solar by utility companies. I decided to narrow down the topic by focusing on decisions made in Nigeria, as Nigeria has a much lower percentage of people with access to electricity than other African countries and the electricity that is available is unreliable. My hope was to learn what causes successes and failures in a complex sociotechnical system by using actor-network theory to analyze how actors impacted the entire network. Just as a system is more than just the sum of its parts, failure can be caused by one small error that compounds itself through a system. I analyzed various laws and agencies involved in the Nigerian power system. I also looked at the infrastructure and cultural values and their impact. For example, there has been underinvestment in power generation and transmission facilities since the 1990s, leading to a low generating capacity. Furthermore, large amounts of Nigeria’s natural gas is exported as opposed to being used for domestic energy production. Government agencies would create plans to fix these problems, but they would not be approved by another agency, preventing action. By examining Nigeria’s power system, I have gained insights into the workings of a complex system.
Any sociotechnical system requires good interfaces. Seeing how small issues in multiple components of a large system can lead to large consequences, such as with the Nigerian power system and the Boeing 737 MAX. The Nigerian power system showed the importance of ensuring components of a system act in sync while Boeing 737 MAX shows the importance of one change (switching the engine led to a multitude of downstream consequences that were not adequately addressed). As a result, what I learned from STS, I endeavored to test components both individually, as part of a subsystem, and in the entire robot. I also made sure to think of how design changes I made would impact the overall system.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Technical Advisor: Natasha Smith

STS Advisor: Kathryn Neeley

Technical Team Members: Philip Chadwell, Zach Hay, Margaret Clarke