Eduarduino the Dancing Party Robot!

Struggling to become famous on Tik-Tok? We have a solution for you!

Eduarduino is your own personal Tik-Tok proxy! He is a dancing robot capable of executing all the dance moves you cannot!

Eduarduino's high-fidelity movement system was inspired by the classic marionette. He makes use of servo motors, and LEDs to dance to your favourite music so that you can become Tik-Tok famous by proxy.

To create your own Eduarduino your will need:

- 1x Arduino Microcontroller

- 4x Servo Motor

- 1x Sound Sensor

- 1x RGB LED

- 1x Bread Board

- 24x Jumper Cables

- Super Glue

- Fishing Wire

- 6mm black acrylic sheets

- Access to a 3D Printer and a Laser Cutter

Download the .stl files below and 3D print them. Then download the rhino files and laser cut them. We used 6mm black acrylic for the laser cut parts and black PLA for the 3D printed components.

1. Glue together laser cut pieces to assemble column.

2. Position and glue the four servos to the top trellis as shown, making sure that each servo arm has enough room to rotate freely. Position the LED in the center of the top trellis and glue it in place. Run wires from all four servo motors and LED through the column and out the bottom.

3. Attach the top trellis to the column with glue and complete the wiring by attaching the ends of the servo wires to the breadboard as shown in the fritzing wiring diagram.

4. secure the breadboard and wiring into the bottom of the base (tape or glue) and secure the sound sensor so that it pokes out of the small hole in the side of the base. Place the platform on top of the base but do not glue it (it is the circle with a square hole in it).

5. Slide the column through the hole in the platform and glue it to the square divot in the bottom of the base. While you do this, make sure the wires coming from the column are tucked into the small opening in the base of the column.

6. Now, slide the platform upward to access the inside of the base and complete the circuitry by attaching the wires from the servo motors and LED to the breadboard as shown in the wiring diagram.

7. Tie or glue fishing wire from the end of each servo arm to Eduarduino's joints. We attached one servo to the back of the hips, one to the front of the hips, one to the right hand and one to the left hand, and anchored the head to the trellis above to suspend Eduarduino (Make sure that his feet gently touch the ground). Use the small loop holes in the hips, hands and head to secure the fishing wire.

DONE!

The code used by Eduarduino engages servo motors to varying degrees and illuminates an LED as one of three colours based on the volume of sound detected by a sound sensor. This allows Eduarduino's dance to be unique to every song.

Click below to download the code!

Eduarduino works in the way we envisioned since the conception

of its primary idea: A machine that reacts to sound and controls a flexible puppet to make it dance. However, there where moments where we have to adjust ideas and rethink about certain elements, additional features and other preliminary and assembly issues before the its completion:

1. Making Eduarduino’s Body

Eddie’s body was tricky to figure out. Escentially, its body had to be flexible enough to dance but also rigid enough to maintain its posture and humanoid form. We decided to use a “Chain connection joint” in specific points like: hands, elbows, shoulders, hips and legs.

2. Adjusting the code

The Arduino microcontroller had to be adjusted several times because we had to add more servo motors and an extra LED light. By adding this elements, the movement of the servos became affected reducing its angle of rotation. After trials and errors editing the code, we were able to find a solution and make every servo rotate at its full rotational scope while keeping the LED light lighting and switching between red, blue and green.

3. Finding the right spot for servos and point connections

We had to experiment with the position of each servo and its connection to Eduarduino’s body to make sure the dancing movements where smooth. It took a series of trials to find the perfect location, size of fishing wire and connection points.

Besides, there are a few things that we consider could be improved in our Eduarduino’s design:

· The body could have more inflection points, specially in legs and head.

· Servos could have personalized ranges of rotation. In such case, the rotation range of each servo can have a relation to the part of body it is attached, allowing for more combination of movements.

· Servos could have bigger arms, in that way we could extend the range of motion and even increase the size of Eduarduino himself.