"Mimic" Desktop robotic arm toy project
Created January 2020 by Trent M. Wyatt
- Box with two arms, each with 4 degrees of freedom: Waist, Elbow, Wrist, and Pincher.
- The first arm has a 5K or 10K potentiometer at each joint and the other arm has a servo at each joint.
- The first arm is the input arm, reading the 4 analog values from the pots
- The second arm is the output arm that can mimic the movements of the input arm
- A pushbutton and a bi-color LED are provided as input and output for setup, mode selection etc.
- An on/off switch is also included.
- A jumper is included to allow single or dual voltage sources for logic and servos
- Two 18650's power the logic and servos
- Built in USB battery charger
Current features:
- Allows the output arm to mimic the input arm in real time.
- The mimic can be disabled
- It can "park" the output arm so it lays flat across to box top
- Movements can be recorded and played back
- Recorded movements can be stored to/from EEPROM
- Uses Button "Gestures" to multiplex the functionality of the single control button
- During playback the "pinch" potentiometer controls the playback speed
- Uses lightweight dynamic template based storage for recording, playback, and parking sequences
- (hardware) Added a brace to pressure the wrist servo shaft so it stays pressed in (better: replace that servo)
Control by using the button with "gestures":
- Single Click: Toggle idle or mimic mode
- Single Click and Hold: Enter Recording Mode:
- Single Click: Add position
- Single Click and hold: Exit recording mode
- Double Click: Enter Playback Mode:
- Any button press: Exit playback mode
- Double Click and Hold: Park the servo arm and save any recording to the EEPROM
TODO:
- Add googly eyes to servo arm :-)
- Add ability to play "Scissors/Rock/Paper" against the arm! :-)
- Add mic and op-amp to have dance-party mode!
- Enhance the output arm so it takes the position of each servo into account when moving to a new set of positions so the deltas for each movement can be evenly spread across a given amount of time. This will allow further enhancement as a "playback speed" setting can then be added.
- Add a SoftSerial port and implement an API to allow external control
- Add HM-10 Bluetooth module to SoftSerial port for wireless control
- Use the serial API to drive the arm from my JavaChess repo
- Use the serial API to be able generate arm animations when someone scores from my nhl/baseball game feeds repo
