Build a Smart Gomoku Playing Robot With Hexbot

In this Instructable project, we will build a smart Gomoku playing robot with the Hexbot desktop robot arm. The Hexbot robot arm is a high precision desktop robot arm with 0.05mm high repeatability and modular design. It comes with 5 end effectors includes a pen holder, laser engraver module, 3D printer module, suction cup, and soft gripper.

Play Gomoku with Hexbot

With the high precision and up to 500g payload capability, Hexbot can be applied in some small scale industry. We can do something very cool with Hexbot, such as laser engraving our phone case and sorting different objects with the OpenMV kit and 3D printing:

Drawing a SpongeBob with Hexbot

Play "Happy Birthday" with Hexbot

Sorting M&Ms with Hexbot

Packing an iPhone box with two Hexbot

Here is the whole process of making the smart Gomoku playing robot:

Hexbot also comes with a conveyor belt and a sliding rail and we can combine them with Hexbot to build a mini production line on our desktop. Here is the Kickstarter video of Hexbot and this project is crowdfunding now, learn more about Hexbot here.

Materials

• Hexbot Robot Arm
• Power supply
• Suction cup kit
• Soft hose
• 14-inch touchscreen
• Gomoku sticker

Tools

• Double-sided tape
• Screwdriver

Software

• Qt Creator 5.11
• Arduino IDE

Masure the size of the touchscreen and the height of the robot arm base, design the keyboard base and piece box with four holes that can store 36 pieces. Print it with the Hexbot 3D printing module.

With the touchscreen, we can detect the status of the chessboard and send it to the computer. To get the better performance, we need to get rid of the bubble of the sticker out of the screen.

Fix the 3D-printed base and piece box on the back of the touchscreen with the double-sided tape.

Fix the Hexbot robot arm on the plate and mount the suction cup modules. Put the chess board on the plate and test the reaching area with the robot arm and adjust it if the suction cup cannot reach. Fix it with double-sided tape on the plate.

Connect the pneumatic box and suction cup head with the soft hose.

Connect the pneumatic box and the robot arm with the type-C caple.

Connect the power and the serial port.

Adjust the Computer Resolution to Map the Chessboard
I changed the resolution into 800*600 pixel to make it map correctly from the touchscreen to the computer screen and you can change it according to your computer screen resolution.

Record the movements of the suction cup

Drag the head of the robot arm to the four ends of the chessboard, record them. Program the robot arm to get the Gomoku piece at the piece box.

Hexbot is crowdfunding on Kickstarter and it hit the funding goal in less than five minutes. Click HERE to know more about Hexbot.