Teachable Robotic Arm

This is my six degrees of freedom robotic arm that I built for the science fair of my Junior year. The goal of this project was to create a robotic arm that has the capability of being "taught" new motions by physically manipulating it. The acyclic pieces were laser cut from my schools laser cutter and I got the file for the pieces of off thinigverse, specifically here: www.thingiverse.com/thing:387 . Instead of using 6 average hobby servos, like a regular robotic arm would have, I used six of adafruit's analog feedback servos. These servos have an extra wire coming from the servo other than the three wires, Signal, 5v gnd, that allows the servo to receive the exact position of the servo. This extra wire that goes to the analog pin creates a closed loop system, so the user can know exactly where the servo ended up after you sent it a command. In addition you can use the servo as an input device so a person can hit the record button on the robot and then move the robot to a desired location and then hit the record button again to stop the recording process. The servo values are then stored to the EEPROM and can be replayed when the replay button is hit.

Here are some photos of the assembly, I used a combination of 3x10mm screws/nuts, 3x15mm screws/nuts and 3/30mm screw and nuts, which were pretty hard to acquire, but I ended up ordering them online.

On Saturday, March 15, I went to the Massachusetts Regional Science Fair. In order to qualify for the state level competition I needed to get top 40 of all the projects. I had three separate judges, an Electrical Engineer from Umass Amherst, an undergrad from Tufts, and a programmer from a robotics startup in Cambridge called Jaybridge Robotics. My project was against the wall because it needed electricity, and thats where all the cool projects were in my opinion. After all the judging I was able to look around and check out other kids project and was a little intimidated by the projects that have not one poster board, but two poster boards stacked on top of each other. The Awards ceremony come around at 3 and I was getting nervous as the 40 places countdown until we get to third place. There was only two kids including me from my high school competing, so when the called my high school for 3rd, I thought it was for me, but was greatly disappointed when it went to the other girl at my school for her Green roof project. Then 2nd place was called and I was ready to leave when the called 1st place and I won! I received not only a check for $500 dollars, but a trip to Los Angeles to represent Massachusetts at Intel's International Science and Engineering Fair and to go the State level competition! I was ecstatic and still can't believe it.

After the Regional competition, I then moved on the state level fair at MIT. At this competition, I really didn't know what to expect because it was my first time doing a science fair competition. I set up my board and my robot, made sure everything was working, then started to walk around and converse with other students. I really enjoyed seeing other kids that shared the same interest as mine, especially the engineering projects. At 9 o'clock the judging began and I had a lot of them. I was scheduled for around 6 of them I believe, but there was a lot of other judges that came up to me and asked me to tell them about my project because they were intrigued. At lunch time I was called up for a quick information session about the International Science and Engineering fair trip and I got to meet who I was rooming with in Los Angeles, Greg. After the meeting the judging continued and then at 3 o'clock we went to the auditorium for the awards ceremony. Since there were so many students attending the event they gave 20 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place and 5th place awards. In addition to the award there are other awards given out to specific types of sciences. I was awarded the first place award alongside a $65,000 scholarship to Regis College and the American Society of Safety Engineers Award.

Two weeks later, and I was boarding a flight from Logan to LAX airport. On the flight, I chatted with Nathan Han, a freshman from Boston Latin, who was also representing Massachusetts. It was the first time I was able to have an in-depth conversation about robotics with a peer; we talked about programming techniques and how to give robotics the ability to see.

At the fair, I met students from across the United States, and from countries like South Africa, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Germany. One student, whose project booth was directly across from mine, taught me about “closed looped systems” - a robot that takes in information from its sensors, and in doing so, is able to keep itself upright.

I had ten people judging my project. They had a deep understanding of my work, and expected a lot of me. The difficulty of the first judge’s questions took me off-guard, but by the time the third and fourth judges came by, I mentally pushed myself to answer the questions as best I could.

In the end, I didn’t place in my category of electrical engineering. But my friend Nathan, whom I had met on the plane, won the grand prize. After he went on stage to receive his award, myself and the other students from Massachusetts crowded around him and lifted him up on our shoulders. This photo appeared in news publications around the country.

The International Science Fair was the highlight of my high school career, and it solidified my choice to be a robotics engineer. As the first-ever student from Newburyport High School to attend the International Science Fair, my aim was to learn as much about engineering as I could - both from fellow students and professional engineers. Oddly enough, it took a science competition to teach me that science isn’t a competition, and that one person is not going to solve the world’s problems alone. It’s about collaboration, and pushing the limits of what’s possible.