The Magnetically-Coupled Ball Drive (MCBD) is an ongoing senior design project at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. The ball drive is designed to be capable of omni-directional motion, and it is comprised of a spherical wheel coupled to a yoke via an array of magnets. Originally, the ball drive was coupled physically to a larger yoke without magnets, but the magnetic aspect was added in 2020 to increase the ball drive's performance. Since the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the 2020 team's work, we are excited to be the first team to build a physical prototype of the MCBD. It is our hope that this ball drive could someday be used to enhance the maneuverability of devices such as wheelchairs and moving carts.
On our team's website, you can find more information about our project. The design page includes our design concepts and selection process, an analysis of our design, and our project budget. The manufacturing plan page describes how we fabricated each subsystem for our beta prototype. On the updates page, there are bi-weekly updates of our work on the project and our project schedule.
