SpiroBot

SpiroBot was born out of my desire to demonstrate the ability of robots to aid and foster creativity. The robot accomplishes this interactively by transforming and abstracting user’s input. While I hope to develop additional functionality, the specific application for this project was inspired by spirographs, the drawings produced by the Spirograph toy. I created SpiroBot for the final project of a Designing with Microcontrollers course in five weeks. It was built on a three-wheel holonomic drive platform I had previously created for a research robot named Yolo—under the supervision of roboticist Guy Hoffman—that was accepted to the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction Student Design Competition. On top of this platform, I designed a compact mechanical arm system driven by a servo motor and manufactured via 3D printing and laser cutting. I also integrated a power system, TFT LCD screen, and PIC32 microcontroller. A program I wrote in C translates parameter entries into Spirograph-like drawing patterns via transform and concurrent motor control functions. More information on this project can be found at: https://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/f2017/pbm53/pbm53/pbm53/index.html