Supply Swatty Shawty

For this machine, we created a robot capable of ‘swatting’ away people from stealing 

materials in the studio. By placing the robot on top of your supplies, its ultrasonic sensor, 

LED, LCD screen and mechanic servo motor all work in conjunction in order 

theoretically stop theft. Our initial idea to have a robotic arm activated by a nearby 

ultrasonic sensor evolved into multiple outputs (LCD screen with message, LED light 

that turns on, etc) and overall our robot provides the seemingly useless task of ‘swatting’ 

unwanted visitors from students' accumulated piles of supplies.

Materials:

• Servo Moter
• Arduino UNO
• 16 x 2 LCD Screen
• Red LED
• Potentiometer
• Register
• Bread Board (LARGE)
• Ultrasonic Sensor

Write up code for arduino digital inputs for ultrasonic sensor, servo motor and LCD.

Connect LCD to ground and power to create power and write code for setup of LCD screen.

Connect Potentiometer to ground and power, connect servo motor to ground and power, connect LED to ground and power. In the code, calculate distance and use that to detect if motion is detected withen the parameters in the code.

Connect servo motor and ultrasonic sensor to power and connect potentiometer to power. In code, code lines to make LED blink when motion detected using if/else statements.

Connect Arduino Uno to circuit and finish code and physical components.

Fabricate body out of white plexiglass and laser cut to specifications to house the body, circuit wiring, screen, LED and servo. Also fabricate a 'swatter' out of plexiglass to 'swat' people from supplies.

Robot is done! (Attached is videos of the robot and its various components in action)

VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/yw9lLZYutDQ

Conclusion:

Overall, this robot was quite the learning curve. We stared with our intial idea of having a robot able to 'swat' away people and had to adjust our creativity as to what we could feasibly build. Alternates such as the singular LED and the position of the LCD screen had to be adjusted in order to be build in the physical world vs tinkercad and overall this project required a lot of product testing and experimentation as every phase. In terms of what worked best, the ultrasonic sensor and LED were the easiest to program and the servo motor and LCD screen programming caused the most issues. To resolve these issues we looked towards preexisting code, experimented with statements (if/else, etc) and worked as a group to combine our brains and result in the final project. Also, the construction of the box to encapsulate the whole device was a struggle and required many laborious hours at the laser cutter, causing mass frustration but we are excited to have the robot done to our original specifications.

In the process we learned the significance of experimentation and team work. Every member brought a specific angle (aesthetic, technical, logical, etc) and together we worked to our strengths to create this cool, useless, robot. Overall, the machine behaved overall but we had significant issues in the motor, in terms of what motor to use, strength, durability and delay of the 'swatter'. All these issues were resolved in the final product through research and trial and error analysis.