Students: Anton Vonk, Bastiaan Snoeij, Loukas Leftheriotis, Sander Otto, Zainurofiq Akbar Benda
Smart Manufacturing and Robotics minor from The Hague University of Applied Sciences launches PromoBot 2.0
An eye-catching two robot arms setup with dynamic display and audio to attract visitors on the campus open day, a perfect modern way to promote the Smart Manufacturing and Robotics minor!
Introduction
Step into the future of innovation with our eye-catching two-robot arms setup, dynamic display, and immersive audio experience. This interactive showcase is designed to captivate visitors during our campus Open Day, offering a firsthand glimpse into the possibilities of modern technology. Not only could the robot provide all of the information you need to know about the minor, but you can also play mini games and do a lot of cool stuff with it. It’s not just a promotion—it’s a live demonstration of how robotics and smart technology are reshaping industries, inspiring students to lead the next wave of innovation.
Problem
The SMR minor staff intends to increase the number of students enrolled in their minor, and one of the perfect moments to do it is to do promotion on the campus open day. Traditional methods of promotion, like making an informational booth or handing out pamphlets, seems a lot of boring work and uncompelling, leaving potential students disengaged. To inspire and attract future innovators, the presentation must embody the cutting-edge essence of robotics and smart manufacturing—delivering an experience that is both memorable and representative of the program’s real-world applications. Additionally, the previous setup is difficult to transport and not quite portable.
Solution
In the previous project, there is already a PromoBot that is built but the feature its offer is quite limited and the robot is not yet safe enough because of the absent of protective-screen around it. To solve this problem, we made a setup for an interactive showcase with robot arms. Equipped with 2 Kawasaki f-series robots, camera vision, high-definition display, touch-screen tablet, and vibrant audio system. This showcase could provide all of the important information about the minor. The robot also offers fun activities and mini games for the people who interact with it. There are 3 minigames that are available to interact with:
- Maze-minigame
- In this minigame your goal is to bring the ball right into the middle of the maze that is mounted on the robot’s end of arm tool . There will be a virtual joystick that you could interact through the touch-screen tablet. You can try to balance the maze so the ball can get to the middle by moving the virtual joystick. Each movement of the virtual joystick then will be translated into coordinates for the robot to move. When the game is finished or the player decides to quit the game, the robot will reset the game by flip the maze so the ball will go back to the initial position (on the edge of the maze).
- Tic-Tac-Toe
- In this game, there are 2 difficulties that you can choose: easy or hard. There will be a tic-tac-toe game layout appear on the screen and the player can interact with it by pressing the squares through the touch-screen tablet. Every time a player make a move (either the human player or the computer), the robot arm will put a physical piece in the physical board. Each piece has a metal plate in the middle so the robot can pick and place the piece using an electromagnet that is mounted on the robot. And if the game is finished or the player choose to quit the game the robot will clean-up the boards itself. Just like the regular tic-tac-toe game but your opponent will be the robot!
- Rock Paper Scissor
- This game is already existed in the previous setup but you need to tell the robot what you “shoot” (either rock, paper, or scissor) manually. So we add a camera on the hand that could detect your hand. We also add an instruction on how to play it on the web interface. When a player press start it will count down for 3 seconds to simulate a real rock-paper-scissor game. The robot will also do a movement just like a real human during the count down.
The minigames are not only features this robot offers. Other features that this robot is also equipped with an AI Chat-Bot that has been trained to be able to answer all of the information you need to know about the minor. Paired with a speech recognition that could understand both Dutch and English, you can ask all of the information or basically anything!
Besides all of the software improvement, our designed setup is one of our biggest features we could offer. As you can see from the pictures below, we made a lot of improvements from the previous setup.
Those improvements includes:
- Built an enclosure with aluminum profiles as the frame and polycarbonate glass that is not only firm and sturdy, but also offers maximum visibility. The frame itself is divided into 2 parts, the upper and lower parts. The upper part could be lifted for maintenance purposes. The lower part serves as the storage for the CPU, robot control boxes, Arduino, and all of the components needed.
- Built a CPU with decent specification so the setup could run independently.
- Add a mounting platform for the TV as a display on the back of the frame.
- dd 4 wheels with stabilizers on each bottom corner so the setup is movable within the building but also stable in stationary position.
- Add an emergency button on the left side of the enclosure so the robot can be stopped during any moment if it runs to failure.
- Add a safety relays on each of the side doors, so the robot will stop when someone open the door.
- Add an electromagnet in the End of Arm Tool that is also designed so it can pick and hold the maze using a lock concept.
How the product works
The customer only needed to set up all the robots as the diagram provided and start the whole system. After the system has been started it just needs one person in charge of supervising in case the visitors try to cross the safety measurement, and we have made safety features in case our system runs into an error. We assure you that our system is entirely safe. For more information, please contact us!