Hand Gesture-Controlled Robot with Robot Arm
A car controlled by the power of your will.. oh and also your hands
Engineer
Kalidev C
Area of Interest
Video Game Designer/Creator
School
Palo Alto High School
Grade
Incoming Sophomore
Final Milestone
For my final milestone, I took every component of what I had previously built and mounted it on a wooden plate that would serve as the base for my robot, as well as attaching my flex sensors to my gloves in order to truly control the robot with my hands. As I flex my fingers, the flex sensors will write down values and send them to my Arduino, which reads these values, and tells the servo to rotate in conjunction with these values. The higher the bend, the higher the value, and the more the servo will rotate. The DC motors will also continuously spin, letting the car move around. One major problem I faced was getting the DC motors to cooperate with the Servos running. To fix this, I wrote entirely new code from scratch and rewired my circuit in a way that worked with the code. A link to all the code I have used can be found here.
Second Milestone
My second milestone was getting my Motor Driver to turn my DC motors while my servos worked my claw. A motor driver is a device that takes in a smaller current, and converts it into a larger current that can be used to turn a motor. It works in conjunction with a DC motor which is a motor that converts DC voltage, or direct current, into mechanical energy used to turn the device. My flex sensors will send a value to my Arduino, and my servos will read and turn based on that value. On the other hand, my Arduino is also reading the coding and sending signals to my DC motors to turn when declared. One major problem I ran into was getting my Arduino to properly read my code. In order to code the Arduino, I combined the code that would work each individual motor, and combined them into one. However, none of the motors were willing to turn. In order to get them to work, I had to rewire each individual component until they were willing to interact properly with the code. For my next milestone, I plan on sewing my flex sensors onto my glove in order to truly control my robot with my hands. I also plan on mounting everything onto a steel base in order to turn it into a car that is able to drive around
First Milestone
My first milestone was getting the flex sensors to work with my servos by having the servos rotate a certain amount in conjunction with the angle the flex sensors are bent at. A flex sensor is a variable resistor that increases its resistance the more it is bent. The Arduino is the core of the machine; it reads the values the flex sensor, writes them down, and sends them to the servos. The servos function as motors and work to not only both open and close the claw, but also rotate the claw up to 180 degrees. One major problem I faced was coding the Arduino. As it turns out, Arduinos are coded in their own language, which I was not familiar with. Prior to this, I have had minimal experience with Java, which is quite different. However, I found that the logic and the functions were quite similar, and was able to teach myself how to code the program necessary for controlling the servos. One lesson I have learned is to keep pushing through hard times. I have constantly wanted to give up and move on, but I kept pushing and eventually found the answers I needed.
Starter Project
My Starter Project is the Light Organ. It is a device that listens to music (works with voice too) and puts on a light-show to go along with the beat. It is powered by a 9 volt battery. The current flows into a series of transistors, some of which amplify the flow of the current, and others that act as switches; when the current reaches a certain voltage, the transistors allow the whole board to go live, but below that, and nothing will flow. The current also flows though resistors, which limit the current (so the lights don’t explode). It then flows into two capacitors which are responsible for storing electricity and discharging it when necessary. Next, the current reaches the potentiometer, which acts as a resistor. The microphone converts sound waves into electricity and sends it to the capacitors. Because of the way the resistors outnumber the transistors (amplifiers), the power of the current when it reaches the LEDs is too weak. However, the capacitors receive the signal to discharge the electricity they have stored up from the microphone, and the current reaches the LED’s, where it then circles back around the circuit.
From this experience, I now know to be absolutely careful with my projects, as one small mistake will always come back to bite you later. One major problem I ran into with the Light Organ was once again something very small, yet very critical. I had not clipped the wires sticking out of the board to a short enough length, and they connected, leading to a short circuit. On top of this, the solder was starting to leak into other ports. I have found that paying attention to details as small as this is the only way to be able to find success in creating something as an engineer.