TECH Robot Hand

For this STEM project, we were instructed to design a Styrofoam hand with a code that could calculate the dimension of the hand and control the movement of its fingers. The project included many STEM components. For example math, technology and engineering. In the project we have to figure out how to design the hand with limited materials, we also had to code for the dimension of the hand and the movement of the hand and lastly we programmed the servo motors to rotate to move each finger individually.

Before we started the project we were given materials to build the hand the Styrofoam was used to make the model of the hand and fingers. Then everything else was mainly supports for the fingers and strings.

Elastic

sanding block

markers

needle

exacto knife

paper clips

plyers fishing line

Styrofoam

servo motors

glue gun

The first step of the project was assigning everyone jobs. The primary jobs were to make the math code, tech code and the hand. I ended up doing the hand and the math code with minor assistance with the fingers from Evan and Nargiz. Then finally the tech code was done by Evan.

• I first traced my finger for the model of the hand
• then I would cut the Styrofoam into rectangular prism pieces with the exato knife in measurements of my fingers
• Then we shaved the fingers and took the measurements of the cylinder with the hemisphere
• Then I cut the fingers into 3 separate sections that are called a truncated cylinder and 2 for the thumb
• then I put a fishing line through each section of the fingers to connect them together so then later it can be moved with the servos.
• then I cut paper in half so the clips could hold the fishing line on the hand
• then I used Elastics to hold the fingers in place by cutting them into small pieces and putting each piece on each knuckle

For the math part I had to make a code in the image i provided iy shows that the code is mostly defining each variable for example W = float(input("enter the width of the Rectangular prism: ")) this is defining that W will be the width of the rectangular prism and this is the same for the rest of the defining part of the code just different variables then we use the variables to make a code to calculate the volumes of shapes for example VRP = W * H * L this is showing that Volume of rectangular prism is Width x height x length Then the last part is printing all the answers to make it easily readable the printing part would look like print("Volume of the Rectangular prism is %.2f" %VRP) this will show the answer for VRP = W * H * L and then this is just a rinse and repeat for all the other variable and print codes.

For the project we had to create a code meant to move each finger separately. The first part of the code was to include the servo library as this will allows the servos to be controlled by the Arduino . Then the next step was to have a void setup in the code to send code and power to the pins that control the servos. Then we have create different gestures with the hand with code. An example of an gesture would be the thumbs up, in the code we would make all the servos do a 180 degree angle except the thumb because if you make it 180 it will bring the fingers down and if its 0 it stays up so so making them all on 180 and the thumb 0 will make a thumbs up gesture.

Then the last step was adding the Arduino and servos to the hand. I first started with the servos by gluing them on the hand and wrapping the string around it so when the servos spins it will move the fingers. I then added the servos wires on to the Arduino to give it power and code from step 4 to move the motors which then would move the fingers down and up.