My name is Daniel and I currently attend Staten Island Technical High School. My main project is the Robotic pincer, reason why I picked this as my main project is because my uncle is quadriplegic and he cannot move his hands, so I though of making a hand that he could wear and use efficiently. I first thought of making the hand entirely out of aluminum however hex sawing the aluminum and trying to attach the aluminum to each other thought me that use all aluminum will be time consuming and it will be also heavy for the user. Solution for this problem was to use variety of materials in the end such as plastic pincer and piece of wood.
Final Milestone
This is the end of my project. I have finally finish the exoskeleton of my project and attached the servo, touch sensor, pressure sensor, and the Arduino to my aluminum exoskeleton and I also had to 3D print a box where my prototyping board and the Arduino will go via Sketch-up. One of many challenges was that my 3D printing was illogical consistently according to the software so I had to remake the 3D design several times and in the end I was successful of making a logical printing model. Also another obsticle that I faced was couple of loss wires so I had to navigate through my bundle of wires and re attach about three to five wires. My Final project seems to be working perfectly, however one flaw of my project will be it has low battery efficiency. I am not sure why it is however I think if I change the battery to have a higher amp the problem will be resolved.
Second Milestone
This is my second milestone and step closer to the finished project. I have attached the pressure sensor to the Arduino and inside of the pincer. My pressure sensor work as an resistor changing the resistance as the pressure gets applied. My pressure sensor resistance is, originally, 10 mega Ohms however if the pressure increase the resistance of my pressure sensor decreases until 50 Kilo Ohms when the maximum pressure, 25 lb, is sensed by the pressure sensor. The pressure sensor was implemented so that pincer will close until certain pressure, however the pressure sensor seems to be detecting lower then 25 lb and lower then it’s maximum pressure would not hold any object so I modified its purpose which is to make the pincer stop at its maximum pressure is applied because if not the pincer would start opening and closing so it could close all the way so this sensor prevents it from twitching. My next milestone will be making the exoskeleton for my and attaching all my project together and finishing the project.
First Milestone
After my starter project I started to work on my main project “Prosthetic Hand.” My first milestone is to attach the servo and the touch sensor to the Arduino micro controller and program it so that when you touch the touch sensor the servo will open the pincer and when you release it the servo will close the pincer. There are three main components in my main project: Arduino micro controller, servo, touch sensor. First component is Arduino micro controller This is the main board or the brain of this project. When you tell the servo to move 90 degrees via the Arduino software, the information is downloaded to the Arduino micro-controller and it gives pulse to the servo to move. Another component of my project is the servo. Servo works by measuring the duration of pulse width and moving to the corresponding location. For example, if the pulse width is 1.5ms the servo turns 90 degrees and when the pulse width is 2ms servo turns 180 degrees. Last but not least is the touch sensor. Touch sensor has two plates of electrodes with a gap between them. When you touch one of the plates, our finger act as a conductor and creates an alternating current (AC) which sends the signal to the Arduino micro controller.
Starter Project
For the last few days I was working on my starter project which is “Ultrasonic Radar” or “Ultrasonic parking sensor.” My project has two ultrasonic sensors which detects the distance of certain object. My project is activated when the car is put on reverse and when the object is certain distance away or nearer from the sensor, the sensor will start to make a high pitch beep sound. Ultrasonic works by echolocation process, which means that they detect objects by transmitting sound waves and receiving the echo of the sound waves when it hits a certain objects. One problem that I ran into when I was working on my starter project was that my parking sensor made sound regardless of presents of an object. I fixed this problem by switching the IC and putting them in their correct location. Now I will start on my main project which is a prosthetic hand for disabled people who cannot move their hand.
Schematic
Dimension
Bill of material
Source Code
#include <Servo.h>
Servo i;
int n;
int x;
int g;
int pos = 130;
const int buttonPin = 2;
int buttonState = 0;
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
i.attach(9);
pinMode(buttonPin, INPUT);
}
void loop()
{
int sensorValue = analogRead(A0);
buttonState = digitalRead(buttonPin);
if (buttonState == HIGH)
{
i.write(0);
if (buttonState == LOW)
{
//i.read()== g;
g = i.read();
i.write(g);
}
else
{
i.write(135);
if (sensorValue >= 1200)
{
n = i.read();
i.write(n);
}
}
Serial.println(sensorValue);
}
}
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Your father and I are very proud of you!!! Your project sounds wonderful. Good luck!