This week in class we returned to the Maker Lab and continued to work on our final projects with our teammates. We, Team Zerott, have decided on creating a small, friendly-looking Maker Lab bot that records people’s ideas and stories or any feedback they have for the lab. The bot will also have the ability to sense when someone gets close to greet the person. The video/audio recorded by the Maker Lab bot will be saved to an SD card/USB which could help in keeping a record of the things that are going on in the lab as well as collecting data for future use.

To start the prototyping process, we first made a few sketches on how we wanted the bot to look like. The inspiration for our bot came from both the BlabDroid and TJBot.

Super adorable BlabDroid

One of the earlier sketches

Most recent sketch

After making these rough sketches, we discussed how each component of the bot should be made and who should be responsible for what. To run the code for the entire system, we’ve decided to use a program similar to Arduino called Raspberry Pi. Holding that would be a 3D printed body with plywood board covering the entire outer portion of the bot and finally, 3D printed arms and legs.

During this session, we were able to jumpstart on 3D printing the part that holds the Raspberry Pi. With the help of TJBot’s open downloadable files on Github and instructions on Instructables, we were able to successfully print out the inner portion of the bot.

Our next step will be to start on the laser cutting of the outside portion of the bot as well as the coding. I am happy about our progress so far and cannot wait to continue working on this project!