Flower | Robotic Arts

There is nothing like getting a package from Sparkfun in the mail to get your morning off to a happy start! I have been waiting all week for my wiimote adapter so that I can get ready to use it to control my delta robot (once I’m done building it). In the mean time I found this super neat code that allows you to control two servo motors for a full range of movement. Cool! I immediately pulled Flower off the shelf and got her moving again. Aside from her cables needing to be tightened again, she danced nicely.

For more information on the code I used, check out this site: Arduino and Nintendo Nunchuck for pan and tilt camera interface.

This is the first robot I made while attending SAIC in Chicago. It was the project which got my feet wet and ultimate caused me to fall in love with electronics and fabrication. I had never used any shop tools before or even touched a soldering iron for that matter. I came a long way in four months from literally knowing nothing to programming, engineering, and building a working robot from raw materials. This little drawing to the left was the first concept sketch I proposed to my professor. I called this robot ‘Flower’ and aimed to have wire pulleys powered by two servo motors tug its spring body in the direction of any onlooker its sonar sensor could pick up in the vicinity. In addition to leaning, I wanted the light bulb on top to glow and dim according to how close people came to it. The flower was supposed to seem curious and interested in its environment… ‘alive’ in fact.

I’m not going to outline Flower’s creation because I finished it last year. I more or less wanted to provide an example to show where my head is at because most of the projects I’m planning steam off of this Flower model (no pun intended).

In the end I produced a robot that looks much like the drawing above.