Making a Robot to Serve Some Mean Badminton Shuttlecocks

Sometimes regarded as a less violent form of tennis, badminton is still a pretty challenging sport. One which suffers like so many sports from requiring at least two players since …. Making a Robot to Serve Some Mean Badminton Shuttlecocks.

One which suffers like so many sports from requiring at least two players since magically flying balls and shuttlecocks haven’t been invented yet. After years of tinkering on a shuttlecock serving robot, [Travis Mitchell] hit upon the idea to convert a small industrial robotic arm for the purpose. The target of this conversion is a positively cute-sized Denso VS050 robotic arm, with Denso helpfully providing a 3D model of the arm as a solid jumping-off point in a CAD project.

Here the task of the robotic arm is two-fold: one is to grab a fresh shuttlecock from a hopper with a pneumatic grabber, the other is to feed it into the spinning wheels that grip and launch it. Fortunately [Travis] has a pretty tricked-out workshop available, including the ability to 3D print metal parts, making building the prototype a snap. After initially thinking of using a Raspberry Pi Pico, he ended up using an ATmega AVR due to the input-output requirements when communicating with the arm.

Using a height-adjustable desk as the base, the whole assembly was put together for some testing on the badminton court.