by: Roberto Andaya

I have always tried taking naps in between classes but they are not as comfortable as I would like. I always wish I had some sort of travel pillow system that did not take too much space. My NapJac idea does just that and more!

Have you ever cooked something that required multiple cups of water? What normally happens is you need to use the sink and guesstimate or bring a measuring tool to make measure one cup at a time. Well

This creation combines the complexity of physical mechanisms and electronics while following the inputs of a camera.

Our main goal was to have the polar system to find all the dirty areas on the whiteboard with a camera and group them up so that special coordinates could be sent to the photon receiver and translated into polar movements on the machine portion. It would then move to that location on clean that area.

Mechanism

Reasoning:

The initial mechanism was based of a tower crane. The way they move is by turning stepper motors and moving along their rails with a gear and pinion or in other words moving in a polar method. Compared to a gantry crane method we believe that this is the most optimal method with time and resources available making this our best choice. When looking at other options of completing this objective we decided we did not want to  create a robot car with an eraser on it due to possible inaccuracies from its weight and wheel contact. It was not a proper solution to the problem. What we did believe is that a stable system system would be more accurate and have less variables to deal with.

Physical Components:

The way we would move this system is with two stepper motors.

One of the steppers would be used to increase and decrease the radius while the other would cause rotation in either direction. With this combination theoretically any point could be reached if it were given cartesian coordinates that could be turned into polar for this two stepper system.

The way that the whole system was connected to the table was with a multi angle clamps that could be attached to the table for maximum stability

The way that the rail was able to move up and down is due to a cut timing belt and a gear to create a quick gear and pinion system to move the rail up and down. The gear was attached to one of the stepper motors.

We used Open Beam, a T-slot system that allowed for rapid construction of the rail system and what would hold the stepper motors in place.

Design Issues:

We found that it was very hard to get the rotation motor to work and found that it was because we did not use a gear system to rotate it but rather directly attaching to the head of the motor which did not give it the forces we were trying to initially achieve.

(Work in progress)

Camera Processing

-Picture

-Unwarp

-Background

-Detection

-Grouping

-Coordinates

EXPLAINED: This robot is a simple 2-d control system that can draw out inputs from a computer onto paper like a printer. There is a joint in the mechanism that allows for different angles and somewhat of a human recreation in terms of writing.

CHOSEN:  I chose this project because of the drawing controls that it has that could be created to clean a whiteboard. It is also interesting because of how it looks like a human arm trying to draw something. I think it is more of an artistic inquiry but it is nice to have some human aspects be included into the project.

CRITIQUED: I like the design in the it represents some human like qualities and it seems to be very accurate. The design looks like construction was simple and good for construction. I think the video could have been documented better instead of using a phone to record the information.

RELATED: Some designs that would relate to this one are more robot arm drawers but also have joints to get different types of angles to represent a hand motion. Some examples are the following:

–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVY2h4w9Bk0

–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUfP2huj8LE

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWZGfWU8_p0

uArm Robot Arm Powered By Arduino

Created by the UFad group

EXPLAINED: This is a robot arm that is able to to move in 3 dimensions and swivel. It is modeled after a manufacturing robot and can pick objects up and move them to a new destination.

CHOSEN:  This robot was interesting concept that could be modified such that it could move up and down and with good controls all around. It also expanded the idea that servos and controlling units were very much able to do an even simpler task of cleaning the whiteboard table.

CRITIQUED: This project did a very nice job in their video. It displayed what they currently had and what they hoped their next iteration would lead to. I feel that it was half project presentation and half commercial for their company but it would nice to get more information on the topic. I wish they would show more functionality to it. I do not like projects that show what a project does but with not much practical use. The design was simply created to focus more on a calibrated unit.

RELATED: This design is related to the robot manufacturing arm family. Control and accuracy is everyhting. Some examples of this are below:

–http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/7b84fe02623897d2c12579930053ed2a.aspx 

–http://www.robotshop.com/en/robotic-arms.html

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0sQgk1qz5Y 

Polar Arm with Arduino

Created by Alessandro G.

EXPLAINED: A way of drawing inputted data with high accuracy on paper with a swivel polar arm creation

CHOSEN: This project was chosen because it could be modified to clean a whiteboard table in designated areas if an eraser was added. It could even deal with specific commands if we decided to move into having it coordinate with a camera.

CRITIQUED: This project does an efficient job of using having a simple angle and radius controlling system but having very accurate results. I think the documentation could have been better such as no outside noises, like a baby, in the background and better camera handling. Overall it displays the concept of the project very well.

RELATED: This work is related to small sized gantry systems. Some examples are:

– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantry_crane 

– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_(machine)

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBQFRG3-jbQ