Zoomba: Meet Tiny
Authors: Kevin Apolo & Alice Rao
This assignment is based on the Pololu 3Pi Bot which is a pretty complete basic robot that allows for many interesting applications. It is an interesting robot because it specializes in line following and using sensors for basic outputs but we wanted to see how we can make this little guy a bit more useful. Potentially even able to interact with its world in a way no 3Pi has done before.
Our inspiration for the Zoomba came from the TA’s frustration with the messes in the lab and our classmates lack of enthusiasm to clean it. We wanted to embody the same spirit as the Roomba, a device that sparked much controversy over its usefulness in a commercial home. The Roomba did what it could to clean your messes for you, but just like most initial products, the original Roombas did a poor job with certain messes.
The result: the Zoomba. Essentially a Roomba that uses magnetic forces instead of suction to pick up electronic components instead of dirt. Our pursuit to perfect the electronics components cleaner veered off path. It got tired of doing what it was told to and doing what we told it to do. Our Zoomba, named Tiny, is constantly being told to pick up after the students. But Tiny gets tired and irritated, and likes to throw random temper tantrums that would spread the messes everywhere if we attached the sweeper arms to the servos.
Electronics:
We used a similar schematic to this one. On the 3Pi, we used PC5 as our input pin (yellow) from the IR sensor. Ground and Vcc were used for power to the IR sensor on the 3Pi.
Here is the code:
http://pasted.co/4c22a067
Mechanical:
We used components that were fabricated using 3D printed PLA parts and lasercut Acrylic for parts that needed to be custom made. These parts were modified using simple mechanical processes (drilling, reaming, and tapping) in order to make the components fit together elegantly.
Infomercial:
You can observe the push and pull between the commands that Tiny tries to follow and its personality through our video.
