BT-U-GO
Overview
The BT-U-GO robot assists first time visitors, guiding them from the entrance of the building to the maker space where I worked.
Included
coding in C++.
finding the electronic hardware thats best suits the project.
working with budgets and hard deadlines.
Aesthetics
Part of the prompt was for the robot to be welcoming, and to seem friendly enough for visitors to want to follow it. I wanted to personify the robot, like the guide was a creature not an object, but didn’t want it to come off as creepy, as many humanoid robots do. I therefore settled on a three-part form, with the only explicitly human-like features being the eyes.
I chose a light material for the body so that the motor had a minimal amount of work to do. After spending most of my budget on the robot’s chassis, I knew I had to find something inexpensive. I bought some chicken wire from a local store - liking the pattern it made when overlaid with itself - and spray painted it white before curving all the edges. The transparent material, color choice, and curved edges were intentional to make the robot look gentle.
I also added a speaker in the robot’s electronics and coded it to make a trumpet-like victory noise when arriving at the lab so that the visitor knew they finished their journey - and because it would be a fun surprise for them.
More Info…
When working at the BTU lab (Blow Things Up maker-space, Colorado) I built and coded an autonomous robot. They wanted a creative solution to ensuring first time visitors know their way to the maker space and feel welcomed.
The most obvious solution would be to program a specific number of steps and turns in the robot’s path. However, I knew from previous robotics experience that this would end up in a fidgety product that would require a very precise starting position for the robot. It is not guaranteed that the robot would be reset correctly, so I searched for another way to ensure the robot’s success.
Solution
I noticed that if BT-U-GO started near a specific wall, then for the majority of it’s journey it could follow that wall around corners and arrive at the lab.
I connected multiple infrared distance sensors to the robot, facing different directions, so that it could sense the distance to the wall, and programmed BT-U-GO to respond accordingly - by moving closer, or further from, the wall.
At the end of its journey, when the robot reached the lab, it needed to stop in the middle of the corridor so I put a strip of gold tape on the floor and added an infrared reflection sensor onto the base of the robot. It could therefore sense a change in the light reflected back and knows to stop at the tape.
The path from lobby - lab is shown here by a red dotted line