Knightsaurus: Robotic Quadrupedal Dinosaur (UCF Senior Design 2026)

Ajouté : 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]My name is Liam Russell. My name is Walker Mitchell. My name is Brady Beerwagon. My name is Dylan Bell. My name is Jackson Siri.

[00:00:08]>> And we're team Night.

[00:00:23]So before we get into this build, let's talk about why we started this project.

[00:00:26]Quadriped robots, especially ones used in entertainment, are actually insanely expensive. So, if you wanted to get one that's roughly the size of a dog, get ready to pay anywhere from $10 to $15,000. If you wanted to buy one that was cheaper, the options that are available are pretty small. So, we saw a gap. We wanted to build something bigger, more robust, and just as affordable as the cheaper quadripeds on the market. Something that could actually be used for entertainment without costing a fortune. But beyond that, this project is really about getting people interested in engineering. What better way to show future engineers that engineering can actually be really fun than combining two things that every 7-year-old loves, robots and dinosaurs. And this idea did not start with us. Years ago, our senior design professor at UCF gifted his daughter a stuffed Stegosaurus toy that she named Roar. So, for the past few years, he's asked a select number of groups for senior design to complete one task. Bring Roar to life. So, for us, that means three goals. Make it walk, make it remote controlled, and make it look like a dinosaur.

[00:01:26]>> Here at UCF, we are in the heart of Orlando, >> theme park capital of the world. In this setting, the Night Source prototype has the ability to shine with its modular design and affordable manufacturing price point less than $700. Night Source is set apart from industry standard quadripedal robots. This results in our stakeholders being theme parks such as Disney, Universal, or SeaWorld. We also have applications in STEM, history museums, science museums, or even in schools. During the design phase, we benchmarked against similar products currently in the market. Those products were created by MIT, Stanford, and Boston Dynamics. Our product differs from these by having a lower price point of less than $700 and a modular system.

[00:02:07]In order to simplify the design process, we broke the robot up into five different subsystems. These subsystems are defined as the head, the tail, the roll cage, the legs, and of course, the chassis. These were all designed and assembled independently of one another to later be integrated into an easy and modular design. Next, we'll walk you through each subsystem, how they were designed, and how they work. The head was fully modeled in Solid Works and consists of three main components. The main head structure, a detachable top cover, and the jaw. We designed the head to add personality to the robot with moving jaw, glowing red eyes, and of course, sound effects.

[00:02:48]We used 21 g servo driving a two bar linkage to actuate the jaw, LEDs for the eyes, and a 3 W speaker for sound effects. The top of the head secures with magnets allowing easy access to the internal components. The head attaches to the neck, which is mounted on the front of the chassis. Jackson will talk more about the neck in the tail section as the mechanisms are very similar.

[00:03:06]>> Focusing on the tail, we can see that it consists of four main components. The first of which is the servo connection to the chassis which is the same as found at the neck. This mounts into the chassis and drives the tail with Kevlar line. The other three components are links of different sizes which are connected by ball bearings and that kevlar line on either side. Pins were originally used to hold the links together, but we instead opted to use rubber bands to make the tail favor a straightened position while stationary.

[00:03:28]Each of these links have a connection point on top of them to hold the covers on while the gold fins plug in on top of them to hold everything in place. Now that it's all assembled, we can see the tail curls back and forth when the servo rotates. Onto the chassis, we started with the Solid Works FEA load case simulation to test various forces such as the weight from the head, tail, roll cage, and battery. Those results showed us some areas that needed strengthening, specifically the head and tail mounting points. We achieved this by adding rounds and chamfers. After testing our initial chassis design with the walking gate, we realized that it was very heavy and had a lot of unnecessary material.

[00:04:04]That's when we decided to use Fusion 360 for shape optimization and generative design. The shape optimization showed us areas of our chassis boxes that weren't really adding any structural integrity.

[00:04:14]After seeing those results, we went back and removed unnecessary material, lightening the load that the legs had to support, ultimately making our robot walk smoother. The roll cage is a cosmetic piece that is made up of 12 3D printed ribs, a top spine, and six fins.

[00:04:29]It all snaps together and is held onto the top of the chassis with magnets on either end. Our legs will feature three 45 kg servo motors for what we call our hip axis, shoulder axis, and knee axis.

[00:04:41]The shoulder and knee are the joints that will be responsible for forward walking lotion and are paired with a 2:1 belt reduction so that we can double our torque. The hip motor directly drives the leg in the lateral direction and this is what will give our robot the capability to turn. In the shin, we designed a spring shock absorption system that will take the impact off of the servos when walking. After the first iteration of design, we assembled a prototype and made a squat rack to see what kind of load these legs can take.

[00:05:04]We then put a spool of 1 kilogram 3D printer filament on top of the squat rack, lifted it up.

[00:05:11]>> Yes.

[00:05:12]>> And it worked. Next, we added another spool.

[00:05:15]>> Oh, no.

[00:05:16]>> Okay.

[00:05:17]>> Okay.

[00:05:17]>> Can't do that.

[00:05:18]>> And we quickly figured out how important it is to put tension on our belts. Once we added idler pulleys to put tension on the belts, they were no longer skipping.

[00:05:26]So, we were ready for our next test.

[00:05:27]attach the legs to the chassis and test the walk. As you can see, our rolling ankle joints caused the robot to tip, which really hindered the walking cycle.

[00:05:34]So, we made static feet and also added a few things like spacers on top of the legs and the shin to keep from buckling inwards and to stop the shocks from compressing too far. After multiple tests and iterations, we finally have our finished leg assembly, which is ready to be mounted to the chassis.

[00:05:49]>> Our decisions for the electronics relied mostly on the fact that we needed to control 12 45 kg servo motors remotely.

[00:05:57]So if we look at our circuit diagram, we can see that it features a 6,500 mAh lipo battery. This battery's 14.8 volts are stepped down by three buck converters to 8.4 and 9 volts. The buck converter delivering 9 volts is used to power our Arduino Uno, ESP32, 5volt regulator, and two fans to cool the system. The ESP32 is what connects to our Bluetooth game controller. The button inputs from the controller are sent via SPI communication to the Arduino. But due to the fact that the ASP32 works with 3.3 volt signals and the Arduino is expecting 5V signals, a level shifter had to be wired between them. To convert all 3.3 volt signals to 5 volts and vice versa. Moving on to the Arduino, the brains of the operation, we can see that it sends commands to the servo driver via I squared C communication. This servo driver takes these commands and accordingly creates PWM signals to send to all 12 servo drivers. These servo drivers are powered by those 8.4 volt butt converters that we mentioned earlier. The Arduino also interfaces with our DF player via serial communication. The DF player has a micro SD card in it and when prompted by the Arduino, it will play audio of our choosing on the 3-watt speaker. And don't worry, I didn't forget about that little 5V regulator I mentioned earlier.

[00:07:16]This is what supplies steady power to the DF player and the additional three servos which are used in the neck, tail, and jaw. We also added an onoff switch for safety and added an OLED display to show the percentage of the battery. And here is a visual of the completed circuit in the robot.

[00:07:32]All right, class is in session. I'm Mr. Russell and today we will be dissecting the brains of Night Surus. So, breaking down the code. First thing, we have a Bluetooth game controller that sends a Bluetooth signal to the ESP32 corresponding to a certain button pressed. The ESP32 then assigns a unique character to this button press and sends it via SBI communication over to the UNO R4. The UNO R4 then takes that character in and figures out which function it needs to call and then calls the proper function such as walking, turning, emoting, moving the head or tail or the emergency kill switch. Within those functions, the UNO R4 uses either I squared comm C communication to send out commands to the server driver or to the screen or serial communication for the DF player. While this is all happening, background functions are occurring such as processing the controller, updating the screen, and then reading the battery percentage.

[00:08:31]Iterative design was essential for creating a successful movement gate for night source. Prototype testing illuminated failures which led to design changes with the M code and mechanics.

[00:08:43]Our current software design uses strrus to define the traits of each robot leg, switch statements to manage the gate phases, and tuning parameters to adjust the leg angles and movement speed.

[00:08:54]Through countless hours of code debugging, kinematics, and testing, Night Source's gate was finalized.

[00:09:00]After all the subsystems were completed, we assembled Night Surus, bringing him to life.

[00:09:09]Heat.

[00:09:33]Heat.

[00:09:36]Heat.

[00:09:54]Heat.

[00:10:00]Heat. Heat.

[00:10:33]Heat. Heat.

[00:10:52]Go nice.