Tesla Cyber Piss

By: Karl Huang, Xavier Yan, Amy Zhang

The proposed “useless machine” is an Arduino car which follows the user via sensors, when it gets within a certain distance, it stops and sprays water, otherwise it continues to drive infinitely, until something blocks its way. There are a few components of this machine that can be broken down – the motors (two for drive, one for water pump), the water spraying system (home-made from tubes), the Ultrasonic sensor which senses obstacles, and the Motion sensor which senses people and triggers it to chase the target within a certain distance. The motion sensor and ultrasonic sensor of the car works with the motors in a sensor-actuator relation – the motors are the actuators enabled by the sensors detecting distance. The water spraying system is also controlled by these sensors, and is programmed to deploy water when the “stop” condition is met. Overall, the Tesla Cyber Piss is a useless machine as it does not possess any particular useful attributes, but rather only annoying and useless ones. 

The initial inspiration was a combination of two ideas merged into one. We had the idea of installing a water spraying system that detects certain motion and sprays water, but then we also had the idea of building an autonomous car that follows an individual around for absolutely no reason at all. Therefore, we combined both of these ideas to make our initial concept and machine even more annoying and useless.

• Arduino Board
• Motion Sensor X1
• Ultra Sonic Sensor X1
• 5V Relay x1
• Switch X1
• 12 VDC Motor X1 (For Water Pump)
• DC3V X4 (only use X2) (For Driving Wheels)
• 5V - 9V USB Portable Battery Pack X1
• 1.5 V AA Batteries X8 = 12V
• 9V Battery X1
• Wheels X4
• Wires
• Cardboard
• Water Tube
• Water Reservoir
• Tape
• Glue
• Spray Paint
• Solder

The final product is an autonomous vehicle that sprays water. It uses Arduino circuits, motion sensors, and ultrasonic sensors to control itself. When turned on, the cyber truck will move, and follow the person in front of it, until it gets too close to a distance of 3 cm, it will stop and spray water.

For the car shell, we decided to use a cyber truck template that we created, as it is the most efficient shape for our project design. The car shell is made out of recycled cardboard, and hot glued together, then spray painted for a cleaner appearance.

Circuit Overview: Car Motors x2, DC Motor x1, Motion Sensor x1, Ultrasonic Sensor x1. This was all assembled onto the car chassis, there are also parts that were soldered on. Essentially, this car has dual motors that power the back wheels. We built a “shelf” platform that is elevated by the motors, so the main battery pack can be placed right underneath, and all the Arduino components can go on that elevated platform. The two sensors are attached at the front, there is also a switch that turns the entire car on and off. The motion and Ultrasonic sensors are the main sensors, and the dual motors are the actuators in this case.

The Water Spraying System was a DIY contraption acting as a water pump. It consists of a motor that is attached to the plastic tube and a "reservoir" made out of an empty super-glue bottle, it dispenses water outwards from the tube when certain Arduino conditions are met. We did an initial test which was successful; but we realized we needed to elevate the water spraying system for it to shoot water higher and have a stronger projectile stream. Therefore, we added an additional box covering to the car shell to put in this system in and place it higherup on the car chassis.

TinkerCAD diagram of the driving motors.

TinkerCAD diagram of the motion sensor, ultrasonic sensor, and the motor for the water spraying system.

Overall, after a considerable amount of time tweaking, programming, and assembly, the Tesla Cyber Piss is finally completed. As a group, we definitely learnt a lot from this experience, both from physically building it, and also from coding it. None of us have had experience building a remote control car before, let alone a fully autonomous one – we certainly learned a lot just from the model making part itself. However, the most interesting part was the water spraying system, instead of buying an expensive water pump, we experimented with ways to build one ourselves from scraps, and while certainly some things can still be tweaked and improved, but overall, that bit worked pretty well and exceeded our expectations. Another problem we ran into was the batteries – we tested many types of batteries, 5V, 9V, 12V. We eventually settled on a USB phone battery pack to drive the car itself and to power the sensors, and added a separate set of 9V batteries to supply to the water spraying system – but during our process, we did run into various power problems where there was not enough power to run everything at the same time. We also learnt a great deal of the sensors, from actually using them, and from figuring out which sensors work the best, it certainly is a trial and error process, just like the rest of the car. We also had to change our initial car design slightly to accommodate for the water pump to be elevated, as it sprays further, and it separates the water leak from the rest of the electronics slightly. But overall, we think all of these components ended up working well and as expected – the driving actuator motors, the sensors detecting motion, and the water spraying system.

Arduino Code File