Winter 2011

With my partner, Nickole Kanyuch, I designed and built a device which sorted Skittles by color. The device is controlled by a BoeBot which has a Board of Education microcontroller on it. This was part of the Science, Research and Technology III class which I took during high school.

The BoeBot controls two servos which rotate two large foam boards. One foam board moves one Skittle from the funnel of Skittles to the TAOS light sensor. Then it moves the Skittle to a large hole. The other foam board holds five cups, one for red skittles, orange Skittles, yellow Skittles, green Skittles, and purple/unknown color Skittles. That foam board rotates and moves the appropriate cup to be under the hole to catch the falling Skittle.

The BoeBot controls a 3-Color LED light. The Skittle is moved from the cache of Skittles to under the light sensor and the LED light turns on. It turns on to give off red, green, then blue light. The light sensor measures and records three voltages that correspond to the light that is reflected off of the Skittle when the LED is turned on. Based on the voltages, the BoeBot determines what color the Skittle is and moves the correct cup to collect the Skittle. If the BoeBot cannot determine what color the Skittle is, the Skittle is put into the purple/unknown cup.

These are the results of how well the machine was able to sort the candy by color.