Autonomous Robot Part 2 – Autonomous high five machines

Kaitlin and I (Rachel) created two autonomous robots who have a conversation through high-fives. When one senses the presence of the other’s hand in range of it’s IR sensor it reacts with a high-five by actuating a servo.

Video:  Autonomous High-Five

 

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Circuitry for one robot

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Three iterations.

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Final design

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wiring diagrams for an arduino, servo and, IR sensor.

In a future iteration of the High Five bots, we will update our arduino software to create richer, more autonomous behavior. As the current version stands, human interaction is required to “introduce” the robots through the initial activation of their IR sensors. Our update will include a randomized actuation of the servo, so that no human contact is required to begin the high-five/greeting behavior. Additionally, we will fine tune the way we handle the analogue input from the IR sensors so that the robots perform in a more visually interesting manner, potentially exhibiting richer movement of the hand and hence a richer interaction. The movement of the hand will also be improved by fine tuning the mechanical design, specifically by tweaking the cam path to be longer, and also more accurate to the motion of a human high five. Finally we will reconsider the visual language of the robots structure, better “blackboxing” the electronics so that the focus can remain on the behavior of the robots rather than their physical components.