The Minions' Page - Full Sculpture

Requirements

Fully autonomous and continuous sculpture
Integration of mini-sculpture
Utilization of at least one servomotor, one sensor and human interface
Little to no duct tape or other temporary materials
A WM2D simulation of key features
Display of information to users

Integration & User Interface

The final sculpture we built not only included the initial mini sculpture, but other new design concepts as well. We made a race track, where the marble would have an equal chance of going down two different parts after coming up the elevator. The first path is relatively short and only uses a few tracks, while the second leads to the marble sorter. Before being sorted, however, there is a gate that can be controlled by a human via a touch sensor. Once the marble is released, it rolls down and continues on. Based on the color of the marble, the sorter spins in different directions, and then deposits the marble onto different tracks.

The new tracks we added contribute to the race aspect of our idea: if the marble is a dark color, it will have a short path to follow before returning to the elevator. However, if the marble is lighter, it will go through a winding loop of tracks, passing a color sensor that changes the elevation of the dark-marble track, which creates an "obstacle" and thus makes the shorter path take slightly more time.

In the end, regardless of the path the marbles take, they will all end up on a wide track and roll down toward the elevator. This elevator will carry the marbles back to the start, creating a fully continuous and autonomous sculpture.

Final Results

We integrated our marble sorter from our mini sculpture into our full sculpture by adding track underneath the baskets that catches the marbles. However, we added a small piece of track beneath the dark marble basket that sends the dark marbles to another run, away from the light marbles. The dark marble run contains a motorized, "S" shaped section of track that changes angle when a marble is detected by a light sensor mounted nearby. The track rotates from a 90 degree angle to parallel with the ground, allowing the marble to continue on its path.

The dark marble then falls from the track and onto a precisely angled trampoline, where it bounces off and into a basket. The basket is placed above a track that leads to an upwards conveyor, one of two on our sculpture. The conveyor lifts it to the top and onto the track leading to the marble sorter. However, it has an equal chance of going onto the marble sorter or another track that resembles an obstacle course and eventually leads back to the first conveyor.

On the other hand, the light marble falls from the light marble basket and continues down a series of spirals until it reaches our second upwards conveyor. The conveyor carries it to the top of the sculpture, where it goes down a complicated run designed to slow its course. Then, it reaches our first conveyor and is lifted up to the top, where it can either fall onto the marble sorter or the obstacle course.

Additionally, we coded the NXT to display text describing the color value of the ball and the action being performed whenever the marble passes by a sensor. This provides important information about our full sculpture to the users.