For our final project in our Principles of Integrated Engineering class, our 5-person team built a self-playing chessboard! I led the mechanical design and fabrication.
One of our main goals for this project was to keep the entire assembly contained within the board itself, which meant no camera systems or robot arms to detect and move pieces. The pieces magically moving was our utmost priority!
Revealing the magic, we built a 2 + 1 axis gantry system under the playing surface with a magnet end effector and magnets press-fit into each piece to latch on and slide the pieces across the board.
With this system, we were able to play a full computer vs computer game or human vs computer, where the human would type in their move into the terminal.
The squares marked 1-16 on each side represent capture spaces, and the pieces on the sides of the board are promotion pieces.
The overall assembly, including side panels, is around 35 x 28 inches, about 4 times the area of a Prusa Core One gantry.
We used smooth linear rails on both the X and Y axes, along with standard 6mm GT2 belts to drive the entire motion system.
Our end effector uses a rack and pinion to translate a neodymium magnet up and down to latch onto pieces.
For our board, we used a 1/8in piece of plywood and laser cut it in two passes to generate the lighter text and darker squares.
Each of our pieces had another neodymium magnet press-fit into it.
For our side panels, we used 1/8in chipboard (thin MDF), which we laser cut to size and attached on the aluminum extrusions with 3D printed brackets.
Our strict 8-week deadline and a few integration challenges meant we couldn't reach our stretch goal of a full human-versus-computer game, with the human physically moving pieces. We were able to get our Hall Effect PCBs working and ready to attach for next semester.
With one Hall Effect sensor under each square, we would be able to detect the board state before and after the human player moves a piece, allowing our chess bot (Stockfish) to play against the human player seamlessly.
