My Final Project Sketches and Idea

For week one, we were tasked with defining our final project and showing some initial sketches.

What is my project idea?

For my project, I want to create a little desk robot companion.

The main robot electronics will be fully enclosed in the head portion, making it portable with an optional clip for a bag. It will have a base as its body which I plan to call desk mode. In desk mode, the robot will be able to charge from the base body. To make the body functional as more than just a charger, I plan to add in a simple clock so with or without the head it can be used as a functional desk clock.

Additionally, I want my robot to be fully customizable on the outside. I plan to embed a series of magnets into the head frame that can be used to attach decorative parts.

My Project goal for Fab Academy:

My goal for this project over the next several weeks is to create my desk companion and give it a custom personality to match my own. I want my robot companion to be customizable, and I want to create a set of sample customization parts. I want my robot to be interactable with at least one touch sensor and one magnet based sensor. (possibly using a reed switch?) I want to design a silicon carry case with a bag clip to hold the head in. I want to create a charging body base with the clock feature.

Week 2 Update: 2D and 3D Project Designs

For week two , we were tasked with exploring a variety of 2D and 3D software, then picking the ones we worked the best with. We were also tasked with creating a model of our final project using our chosen software(s). I chose to use Blender since it is a software that I am comfortable with and have been using for some time now.

I started with creating the head, since in my opinion that is the most important feature on the robot. I started with adding a cube to the design field by accessing the Add menu by using the keyboard command Shift-A. I adjusted the shape of the cube, starting in the front view, by adding more edges using loop cut, and then editing the shape by scaling and moving the vertices. I did the same on the side view, but moving the back vertices inwards closer to the front of the head.

Then I added an additonal cube and did the same process but made it slightly smaller. For this smaller cube I also added an inset face on the front and extruded the face outwards. This smaller cube is used as a boolean object to hollow out the inside of the robot head and make a cutout for the screen placement.

Next I added a cylinder to my design field and shrunk it down in size to represent the magnets I plan to add to the inside of the head. I did not use a real world size at this time, as I am just trying to plan out the magnet placement. I moved and copied the magnet and played around with the placement around the top, sides, front, and back of the head.

Next I added another cube which I squished to make thin and stretched to elongate to use as the screen for the robot. I wanted to explore materials a bit more, so I found an example image of a glass like material and tried my best to use the material editor and recreate the nodes.



Below, you can see three screenshots of what my robot project could look like when it is complete.

The main body shape most likely won't change significantly, but I do plan to incorporate a clock so there may be changes to the front.

The head shape may change if needed to fit the electronics, but the chosen head shape was my favorite and also favored by my family and friends whom I shared my sketches with. In the first image, you can see the possible placement of the magnets for decorative attachments. In images two and three, you can see examples of how one could customize their desk robot to match their personality with printed or sculpted attachments like sailormoon themed toppers or antennae.

Week 4 update: Embedded Programming

In week four were tasked with exploring different microcontrollers and trying out some basic imput and outputs. Since I knew I was going to need a handful of input sensors for my robot design, I decided to test some of the ones I had available as part of my week 4 individual activity. Since I had them available to me, I tested out using a basic push button switch, a reed switch, and a touch sensor. You can check out my week 4 page for more in depth details on my exploration of these basic sensors.

Week 5 Update: Concept Update

During week five I decided to mix my robot project idea with some of my hobbies. I collect ball jointed dolls which is a type of fully customizable doll that is strung with elastic to allow it to hold poses and stand unsupported. The tension in the string and the way it is strung through the body joints are key to the doll holding poses versus falling over.

I decided to use the 3d model design I made in week one of my possible robot head style and shrunk it down to make it the head of my own custom robot themed ball joint doll. I then made a basic body sculpt with the necessary channels for stringing and the neck attachment for the doll head and test printed it. I think the robot head on the slightly anthropomorphic robot body looked absolutely adorable and since it is only about 9 inches from top to bottom it is still a great desk companion size.

This had me thinking, that maybe I want to redesign the concept of the robot to be more than just a head. If I scale the doll up a bit bigger, closer to a Barbie size scale, I would give myself more room in the hollowed robot head to fit the electronics. This could make it feasible to turn my robot desk pet into an intelligent/smart ball join doll desk friend instead.

The current design can't sit, so I am still working on redesigning different portions of the doll body, but I want the doll to be able to sit and stand so that it can be posed on one's desk or just sitting on the side of the monitor stand hanging out with you.

Also, now that I have given my robot arms and legs, I can create hand attachments to allow the robot friend to be useful to hold stuff!

Week 5 Update: New Charger Concept

Since my new robot design now has legs and a body, I was trying to figure out how I would integrate that back into my original design for the charging block. While thinking about ways to essentially chop the robot in half, I had a more aesthetically pleasing design idea. Instead of having the robot split in half to attach to the charger, why not turn the charger into a chair design that the robot can sit in on one's desk! It would be functional and have a pleasing design when not in use, plus my robot friend wouldn't need to be split in two for charging!

Week 5 Update: Robot Brain Research

I found this interesting video from a content creator who created his own AI voice assistant. The video was about 40 minutes long, and he walked through the basics of how he set up his system, what apps/software he used, and his experience with it.

The Home Assistant documentation and download page only has instructions for using a raspberry pi. While I know how powerful this board is, I also know it would be way too big for even my planned scaled up design. I had a quick conversation with chatGPT to see if it could suggest a capable board that is closer to the size of the Xiao Seed ESP32 that I was testing and playing with in Week 4. Unfortunately, it said their smaller boards just wont work. It did give me a suggestion though of using a combination of the Raspberry pi to run the local server and the xiao being the robot brain connected over wifi.

Week 6 Update: My Robot Needs a Name

I started brainstorming ideas to name the robot. If I plan to have any sort of virtual assistant activity I want to have a custom name as a wake up call. I was really blanking on the name so I asked some friends for some suggestions. I also asked my 6th grade advisory students for some name suggestions for my robot character.

For everyone I asked, I kept it open and vague to see what people would come up with. All I told them was that it was a girl robot. Below are a few of the names, some silly and some serious, I received and notes or my thoughts about each name.

Overall the names were good, but not quite feeling right yet to me. Two of my advisees said they really wanted to help name the robot so they sat and brainstormed some other names together and came back to me the next day with their top name. They said it's like electric, but with an A: Alectric.

I wasn't sold on the name, but I did actually feel like it was on the right path. I decided to workshop that name later that evening and came up with a variation of the name: Alectriss and Triss for short. I really like how this one sounds when said outloud. It rolls of the tongue nicely and I practiced saying it a few times with commands like I would an Alexa and I really think this is it!

So, welcome to the world: Triss