Introduction

My group and I were challenged to Create an impractical / silly Robot, my teammates on this project are Ned Camel and Oliver McGovern. We started our process by intensely brainstorming a multitude of ideas like: a slingshot robot, toaster on wheels robot, glitter throwing robot, etc; but finally we brought down to one robot idea. We are calling it the Funkatron 5000, which is essentially a music playing disco bot. The complexity that comes with the Funkatron 5000 are the multiple elements that have to work together in order to create one functioning disco, music playing robot.

The first step was to start building the base of our robot, we had two DC motors attached to two big wheels and for the two frontal wheels we just attached them to lego pieces that are connected to our lego chassis. The next step of our project was to 3D print the disco ball and glue the wheels onto the chassis so that we have a solid foundation for the disco ball.

My group members sites are:

• Ned Camel: https://sites.google.com/view/camel-home
• Oliver McGovern: https://sites.google.com/view/mcgovernmakerportfolio/home

Process

Now that both halves of the disco ball are 3D- printed, I moved on to cutting out different color acrylic cd’s to cover the disco ball with. For this, I had to measure the diameter of the small circle notches on the disco ball and make the inner circle of the acrylic disc 1mm larger than the diameter of the notches so the disc would fit securely. After taking the measurement I made a Illustrator file and then laser cut the acrylic in different colors. So far I have cut out four-disc, two that are pink and two that are mirrors. The reason I only cut out four is that I wanted to use the 4 discs as a trial to make sure the disc fit onto the 3D printed disco ball before cutting out too many and having to go back and change my measurements and file. Although the design aspect is going very smooth, my team and I came across a problem with the code for the wheels and motor. The DC motors that we planned to use and troubleshot before moving on with our code stopped working after many tests. To combat this problem we decided to change from two DC motors under the chassis to instead two lego motors, the plus about using the lego motors is the durability that they have, but the downside of changing motors is that we had to reconfigure our chassis’ design. The next step for my group is to get the lego motors working, continue to cut out more acrylic disc, and figure out the placement of our micro bit and speaker inside of our disco ball so we can eventually glue the disco ball together.

My group members sites are:

• Ned Camel: https://sites.google.com/view/camel-home
• Oliver McGovern: https://sites.google.com/view/mcgovernmakerportfolio/home

Final Reflection

From where my group and I left off, we have now finished our robot. The final design of the robot entails a bedazzled/ bejeweled acrylic discs covering the disco ball. On the inside of the disco ball are the micro bit, speaker, and a portable charger to power the speaker are encased by the two halves of the 3D printed disco ball. The speaker is playing a sped up version of the song Funky Town by Lipps Inc, uploading the song onto our speaker took many tries, but we finally had a break through as to why uploading music to our speaker was so difficult. We realized that we had to compress our file in order to upload the song because the speaker only had 2 mega bites of storage. In order to fix this issue Oliver thought of a way to make the file smaller and compress it at the same time, Oliver sped up the song up to make the file smaller. Although we wanted the original Funky Town song, we realized that the sped up version fits better for the idea of a silly and impractical robot because of the squeakiness of the compressed version. We used a switch in order to turn the speaker on and off that pokes out of one of the holes in our disco ball. After getting the inner components situated inside of the disco ball, we moved onto the chassis of the robot. The only component that needed to be fixed was getting the two new lego motors to work. After many trials and errors, we finally got our motors to move our wheels forward and to turn to the right. We decided that forward and right motions were all that we wanted our robot to do because of the silly aspect that comes with a bedazzled robot moving in random motions and bumping into things while playing a squeaky version of Funky Town. For a finishing touch on the Funkatron 5000, we added a bedazzled gold chain to give it more sparkle and pizazz. Looking back on the process of designing and building our robot we have refined our initial idea multiple times and this is shown through the photos of robot. Overall after creating the Funkatron 5000 I have gotten better skills, especially laser cutting. I have laser cut so many acrylic discs during this process that I am now able to laser cut any material independently and help my peers.

Final Funkatron 5000

Funkatron 5000 silly and impractical robot made from lego motor chassis, 3D printed disco ball, and bedazzled laser cut acrylic disc.