Drawbot

Drawbot was a competition where the objective was to build a robot which could draw shapes without any manned assistance beyond a pre-programmed Arduino. We scavenged motors and gears from a printer that we picked up for free on craigslist. Professor Lima, our wise, powerful, and generous mentor, provided us with the Arduino controllers. The motor shield we soldered ourselves (as you can tell from the pictures below.) The motors we used were stepper motors and could be moved in consistent increments with ease. By timing the these tiny movements with an Arduino, we could pulse the motors and change the length of strings. These changes of lengths were then analyzed in an xy plane and using simple geometric relationships and derivatives we learned how to make a cursor move along any slope we like. A program was made using these mathematical relationships and the robot successfully drew a triangle. Our performance in the competition was exceptional because not only did we have one of the faster times, but we performed efficiently. Our motors were free, we glued some spools to them, stuck them through a poster board, and then tied strings to a marker poked through a cup. It is elegant in its crudeness because it performed better than much more complicated, pricy, and labor drawbots.

(Dashing group of young men)

(Matt Palmer can't resist having his photo taken)