Project 2: Smiley Face


Project Description:

For this project, we are to make an object that can do something, show some "emotion" so to speak, in response to our action. Here is what the official requirements are:
  • At least one sensor
  • At least one motor/servo
  • At a minimum of 1 behavior
  • Minimum size: 150 X 150 X 150 mm
  • It must sense and move autonomously
Brainstorming:

At my disposal are the ultrasonic sensor and the servo motor provided to us in class. The shape of the ultrasonic sensor reminded me of nostrils. So I decided to make a face out of cardboard and poke two holes on it for the ultrasonic sensors. The idea is when I put a thumb-up in front of the face, it will turn from a sad face to a happy one.

Making Process: 

My first step is to make the mechanism for the mouth. I took inspiration from mechanism #93 from the 507 mechanism movements website. The idea is to translate the motor's rotational motion into a linear motion. 

The mouth consists of 3 pieces of cardboard joined together by two screws and nuts and the whole mouth is fixed onto the face with two more screws.

After making the mouth, I thought about how to actuate it with the motor and where to put the motor. I screwed a screw onto one of the holes on the lever arm of the motor. I padded the motor on the inside to adjust how much it sticked out from the face. I didn't want it to stick out too much that it would be in the way of mouth freely moving. Everything was then hot glued together.

I poked two holes for the nostrils and fitted the ultrasonic sensor in there. Because this location doesn't allow me to plug the sensor on the breadboard I had to soldered some resistors and wires onto it.


To program the action, I used the ultrasonic sensor to see if anything was within 20cm in front of it and so there was, the servo's lever arm would go from 0 to 180 degree or the face would go from sad to happy. At the very end, I saved my smile.py script onto the Pico so that whenever it is powered up, the script will be executed without having to be re-uploaded from the computer. 

smile.py


At the very end, I painted the whole thing. It turned out great. I learned a lot doing this project.


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