Remote Hand

For this second project for the subject UATEA in the third year of engineering at ELISAVA, we were given the challenge to create a system that controlled a robotic arm via processing and arduino.

This robotic arm is composed by six different pieces, and each of them rotate in different directions, so, the degrees of each part, change the position of the arm.

From this, a game was created, where top piece of the robot has to touch a dot shown in the screen, and to do that, the player has to determine the rotation degrees of each of the 6 parts of the robotic arm, till getting a position that allows the 6th part to touch the dot.

To do this, we were given a processing code that controlled the rotation degrees of the robotic arm with a keyboard, and we had to replace this keyboard controll with another system that made the same job via arduino.

The requierements for this system were that it has to be intuitive, as it will be presented as a game. And when it comes to the technical part of it, we had to control each of the six different pieces, allowing the player to controll the rotating degreees of each piece of the robot.

In our case, we decided to make gloves that have open connections that are closed when you put together the thumb with each of the other fingers. Each finger will controll one piece.

Selection of electronic components:

Arduino Board (1 unit)

Protoboard (1 unit)

Wire

USB Cable (1 unit)

220 Ω Resistor (6 units)

Prototype:

Gloves

Strap

Tools:

Scissors

Scotch tape

For this project, our principal idea was to create a system using a pair of gloves with which through sensors, the player could control de movement by touching the tip or their fingers. We made some research and found gloves like the following:

AcceleGlove are a pair of gloves with a movement sensor thought to remotely control robots. After this invention, they found different uses like for example, video gaming or sign language translation.

Taking these into consideration, we adapted out idea to it, and also based our final idea on another project. The Enchanted Broom presents a very interesting sensor system, made with two wires that connect to the Arduino and closes a circuit, when the circuit is closed the Arduino is programmed to make the function.

Finally, from these two ideas we developed this project, that results into a personalized fusion of both projects.

To make the circuit we follow the following steps: 

1. We place a resistor on the breadboard.

2. We connect one end of the resistor to GND. 

3. Connect the other end to an analog pin (A0, A1, A2, A2, A3, A4, A5) and leave one wire free. 

4. We also leave a free wire coming out of the 5V. 

5. We repeat this process 6 times until we have a connection for each pin.

To make the prototype, the first thing to do is to get some gloves and a strap, which will be the main elements of our prototype. With the strap, we will surround the torso of the person who will be subjected to the game and we will hook the arduino to it. We have to consider that the free wires will have to be long to reach the person's hands. We make holes in the finger area of the gloves and put them on. We take the wires connected to the resistors and insert them into the gloves. For it to work correctly we have to make sure that A0 (index), A1 (middle) and A2 (ring) are in the right hand and A3 (index), A4 (middle) and A5 (ring) in the left hand. We pull out each wire from one finger through the holes made earlier and wrap the wire around the fingertip. Finally, we take out two wires from the 5V that by the same procedure will go to the thumbs. To obtain a good finish, we sew the wires to the gloves and join the components with strips.

With this project, we have learned how to use Arduino to control other programs like processing. We also explored new ways to create connections with the board that we had not used before to move the robotic arm. We found very interesting this way of controlling the game in which we use our own hands, with the gloves, to pass the voltage through the cable and activate each of the pieces.

Although we would have liked to have had more time and to have made a more professional prototype with better finishes, with the time we have had, we have achieved a working prototype of our idea that meets the objectives we wanted to accomplish and controls the game perfectly.

Therefore, we enjoyed and found this project very interesting, as we have expanded our knowledge of Arduino and the types of connections.