Final Project

assignment

plan and sketch a potential final project

An idea for my final project

I have loved building and programming robots since I first had the opportunity to. When I was 14 years old, I participated in Germany-wide robotics competitions with a team from my school, and we kept competing every year until gradutation. I noticed that most of the other teams started building, practicing and competing younger than our team had been able to. So a teammate and I decided to found a robotics club for kids from grade 5 to 12 at our school in 2012. We wanted kids to be able to work with robots as early as they might want. The club is a great success with kids from all grades, currently sitting at about 50 members each year, which means we need many robots to keep everyone busy and happy and tinkering. Over the years I've learned that most robot systems on the market are either designed to build only one type of robot or, if you want more versatility and a modular system, very expensive. Not everyone can afford expensive robot systems, especially carefully budgeting schools.

There is no robot system on the market that is flexible, modular and affordable, so I decided to develop my own.

While developing, I made a list of requirements my ideal robot needs to fulfill:
- versatility of parts and combinations
- reusability of manufactured parts
- compatibility with existing systems (Arduino, LEGO,...)
- Open Source: everyone can develop their own and improve existing parts
- availability: available to everyone
- simplicity: beginner friendly use of different actuators and sensors
- flexibility/adaptability: quick construction of different combinations with the same parts
- accessibility: parts producable by user with little effort

I started developing a system called Morph3Dbot. It’s a modular cube system with 3D-printed parts, therefore easy and affordable. Currently, a first prototype exists, which I would like to develop further.
During the Fabacademy I would like to work on my concept and the system itself. I hope to earn new skills and knowledge that I can use to develope it further.

Week 02 Computer-aided design

For week 02, I created a design for the first prototype. I decided that the blocks should connect to each other by magnets, because 3D-printed connecting system tend to break off.

Here you can see the one robot that can be constructed with the designed parts.

Week 05 3D Scanning and Printing

This week I created the first 3D parts. As a special challenge this week we were tasked with designing a part that is not substractively producible.

Week 06 Electronics Design

Week 09 input devices

This week I revised my motherboard. I've been thinking about what a useful circuit board could look like. Since it is a modular robot system the boards should be modular. So I developed a basic board with a microcontroller to which the single input and/or output boards can be connected.
Eagle design pictured below (since the laboratory is closed).

Week 14 networking and communications

In that week I got to know I2C and the communication of my final project is based on that.