Drawing Robots Pablo and Sofia

Description

Pablo and Sofia are two autonomous robots that are designed to explore the creative interaction between the human and the machine. The mini mobile robots like to paint with people. Pablo is a bit shy to get too close, so he likes to keep his distance from you. Sofia is stuck far away from Pablo within a boundary. The only thing that keeps her going is the claps of the people around her. Pablo will maintain a physical distance while Sofia will listen to you. The earth is their canvas!

In this Instructable we will go through the parts, logic, and process of building and utilizing both Pablo and Sofia.

The project was conducted as part of the Computational Designand Digital Fabrication seminar in the ITECH masters program.

Kiril Bejoulev & Takwa ElGammal

Electronics

2 x Arduino Uno R3 Controller Board

2 x Motor Driver L298N H Bridge

1 x Potentiometer 10K Ohm (included in Starter Kit) - Pablo

1x 16*2 LCD Module(included in Starter Kit) - Pablo

Sensors

Ultrasonic Sensor (included in Starter Kit) - Pablo

Big Sound Module(included in Sensor Kit) - Sofia

2 X IR Sensor - Sofia

Button(included in Sensor Kit) - Sofia

Motors

8 X DC Motor (Amazon)

1 x Mini Servo Motor (included in Starter Kit)

Power Source

5x 9V Lithium Batteries - 2 x Pablo 3 x Sofia

4X AA Alkaline Batteries - Pablo

2 X Battery Connectors

Main Bodies (x2) - (Amazon)

8 x Car tire

8 x Encoder

16 x T stands

4 x Acrylic Chassis

1 x Battery box

16 x M3*8 bolts

16 x M3*30 bolts

12 x Spacers

Tools

Soldering Iron

Screwdriver - Phillips Head

Double Sided Tape

Markers or Brushes

Zip ties

Mini Bread Board (included in Starter Kit) - Sofia

Breadboard (half size) - Pablo

Both robots use the cart with 4 motors and wheels as a base for their movement. Assemble the cart and by following the circuit diagram attach the motors to the Motor Controller module(L298N)

Pablo is designed to draw with you nearby but not too close. It uses an Ultrasonic sensor attached to a servo motor in order to see if there is an object in front of it and turns to look for a better movement to make that will avoid other objects. The LCD display allows for you to view the distance of Pablo to nearby objects in front of it.

Sofia is designed to be activated with the clap of your hands with the use of the the Big Sound Module. Sofia is also built with 2 IR Sensors on the front of the cart which allow it to detect the boarder of the canvas it is drawing on. When it reaches this boarder it moves back and turns to another part of the canvas. Attach these sensors to the cart as seen in the Circuit diagram. With the use of tape and zip ties attach the elements to the cart so they don't move around. In the Video you can see the output value of the Ir Sensors changes from 0 to 1 when the black line is placed under the sensor and one of the built in LEDs turns off. You can adjust the sensitivity of the IR sensor by turning the built in potentiometer.

In this step you can download the codes for both Pablo and Sofia and upload them to the Arduino board with the use of the Arduino IDE.

Set up the drawing surface and environment you want Pablo and Sofia to draw with you in. Pablo is flexible and can draw anywhere including the floor, fabric, or paper. For Pablo we attached the marker to the back right hand corner but you can play around with the location of the marker to produce different drawings. Sofia is only allowed to draw on the canvas which is boarded off by black tape for the IR sensors to detect. For Sofia we attached a brush marker to the front circular hole of the cart using a zip tie.

We hope you enjoy this project and all of the drawings that you can create from playing with these Robots. For a more interesting drawing we suggest seeing what results are possible from using both robots simultaneously on the same drawing.