CB-Bot(s)

CB-Bots -

Two robots from the future land in the present day and realize it's so colorful. Since the bots can only see the color blue they get quite frustrated with the situation they are in. Exasperated, they attempt to make everything blue which is not blue.

Robot 1: Attempts to do it using a blue pen.

Robot 2: Attempts to make everything blue by spraying color.

The project was undertaken as part of the Computational Design and Digital Fabrication seminar in the ITECH masters program.

Pinaki Mohanty and Carolina Leite Vieira

Robot 1

1. Arduino Uno Board
2. Car Chassis
3. 2 DC Geared Motors
4. L298N Motor Driver
5. 2 Servo Motors
6. TCS230 Color Sensor
7. Ultrasonic Sensor
8. Mini BreadBoard
9. 9V battery
10. Jumper Wires
11. Soldering machine
12. Double Tape
13. Blue pen
14. Foam Board
15. Compact Connections
16. Clamps
17. Mini-trolley wheel

Robot 2

1. Arduino Uno Board
2. Car Chassis
3. 2 DC Geared Motors
4. L298N Motor Driver
5. 1 Servo Motor
6. TCS230 Color Sensor
7. Ultrasonic Sensor
8. Mini BreadBoard
9. 9V battery
10. Mini-trolley wheel
11. Jumper Wires
12. Soldering machine
13. Double Tape
14. Plastic conduit
15. Plastic bottle

Firstly, assemble the car pieces acording to the supplier structures. We recommend using only two geared motors as it’s easier to control the bot and consumes much less power from the battery. The car chassis that we used was a four wheel drive so we assembled only two motors along with the wheels and the front part was supported using a trolley wheel.

The ultrasonic sensor is fixed to the shaft of the servo motor using a double tape. For increasing the high of the servo motor you can also use foam board for creating a small support for the sensor. The servo motor is fixed securely at the top front of the chassis.

The color sensors are very sensitive to light and hence for better precision we covered the sensor using a black paper, enclosing it from the sides.

The blue pen is fixed on to the servo motor at one of the sides.

We chose a plastic bottle which will hold the blue coloured water. The pump is placed inside and 2 tiny holes are made so that the plastic conduit and wires can come out of it.

The mini breadboard, Arduino board and the motor driver are fixed at the top of the car. It is important to use the double tape, since it secures the components and wires in a more stable way.

In both the robots the basic logic of color sensing remains the same. The bot moves and only stops when the ultrasonic sensor senses any object. We calibrated it to stop at a distance of 20 cm from the colored object.

As this distance is good enough for the color sensor to capture the frequencies accurately. The frequencies for each of the components R,G and B are read out. Out of the three whichever component has the lowest value indicates that the color of the object has more of that shade. We fixed the logic to detect only blue and shades of it.

If the colour of the object is blue or a shade of it, the two robots react differently.

Robot 1: So, Robot 1 basically moves the servo motor in 90 degree angles so that it can sketch the objects.

Robot 2: In Robot 2, the moment the color sensor detects blue it triggers the pump to start through a power control circuit (which uses an N-Channel MOFFSET).

We used the following codes for our bots.