Final project: Bluebo Bot

For my final project, I already did some research and I already know what I kind of want to do from beforehand cuz this is an idea that has been in my mind for a very long time already. I have some of the (very ugly) sketches where I was brainstorming here:

I did my first sketch on Thursday and started to write down some of the applications that I wanted inside of each of the parts of my modules. After that I started to do research so I could see if there were ideas that were like this one made before and if there was something I could base my project on.

The good thing is that someone already had the same idea or at least it is a very similar one to the one that I was thinking of making. This can also be a very bad thing because I don't want to have a project that is redundant.

This is the moment where I start to develop new ideas on how to improve this project and make it more interesting so it can still be something that I can work on. I am very fixed on this idea because it is a project that I also want to use as a part of my thesis for my career.

Now let's talk a little bit about how I want the product to work and what it actually is.

The basic idea for the product is that it will be an educational toy that allows kids to learn Electronics. There is going to be a main board for the kit which will be like a master for many other little modules with different Functionalities so that kids can learn about each of these functions individually or by combining them.

My first sketch had an idea of having a communication sensor in the baseboard and also in each of the little modules for them to work together. I planned four modules that helped kids to learn.

1. one about resistors that will have a potentiometer and other options like that, like a light resistor and so.

2. one module to learn about LEDs and how light works with electricity.

3. a module to learn about audio with a microphone and a buzzer and maybe also a little speaker.

4. and a module to learn about distances which will have an ultrasound and a laser-based distance sensor.

All of these are going to be stackable on top of the baseboard which will also have some motors with wheels on the side that the kids can use to make a little car so that the toy can move and be another way of learning about Motors and outputs.

The base will also have some other things like a little screen and a speaker with a separate remote controller to use it as well.

Like I said before, there is already a project that is very similar to this idea, that is named “modular IoT kit” that consists in this little electronic Lego bricks that can be stacked to create iot devices, is also to learn about electronics and uses the Lego Systems to make it modular but my idea is a little different because I want mine to be a little interactive, by adding the little screen and the speaker that can talk to the kids when they put the small modules on top of the base board to learn, or if they want to use them wirelessly they can also connect to them like that.

The baseboard can show you what each module is for so you can use them separately or together to make different projects. Also, maybe when the toy starts, the bot says hi and asks you what you want to learn about or give you ideas. I am not sure how I'm going to make this sentient part that talks, maybe I will just use a little AI or something like that, we shall see.

The toy will have a lot of pre-programmed actions in it, since the wheels are already part of the baseboard, you can make it move with the little controller if you want to and it will ask you if you want to learn how the motors work as well, and tell you that you have options to move it autonomously with other modules and even add parts that make it run differently.

Here is the Sketch of the bot:

My idea is that it will make kids learn not about programming, but more about Electronics. This means that the heavy programming and everything that regards that part will be on my side, but that's okay. I am not the best programmer but I will try my best.

I also want it to be very cute because it's for little kids and little kids are very very hard to impress, they want things that look interesting, but at the same time I want it to be functional and sturdy. That is where 3D printing and cnc will come in very handy.

I will probably use a lot of the ideas already done in the iot bricks that I saw before but of course I will add many of these things onto it as well.

ChatGPT helps

When I finished with this sketch, my boyfriend had the idea of feeding it into ChatGPT v4 (he has the pro version 😋 lucky me), to see if we could have a realistic version or a more understandable one since my drawings are very bad lol. But here you can see the little conversation we had with it:

And that name, of "Blueboard" (which probably was just what it understood instead of Baseboard) resonated with me, so I kinda decided to name my project Bluebo Bot.

Last thing I did regarding it was asking for a model in “portrait” for my index page, and here it is:

I still need to think a lot about the architecture of the whole thing, but I'm certainly excited to start!