ROBOT DOING HOUSEHOLD CHORES: Yes you can build it using EV3

in #steemph6 years ago (edited)

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Every time I built and program a Lego Mindstorm robot, I always make a video out of it so that I can show them online in action, feel free to scroll down and watch it right away you can always come back to read my article if you find it interesting to read the story behind it.

THE DREAM OF HAVING A ROBOT COMPANION IN OUR HOUSEHOLD

I would say it is a dream of humanity to be able to achieve the technology of having a robot that will be doing household chores such as cooking, washing dishes, cleaning up the house, gardening etc., If you have watched the movie Robot and Frank, the robot being portrayed in the movie is perhaps the ideal type of robot that we need in our household, it was programmed to do not only all the household chores you can think of but it was also programmed to perform a therapeutic care.

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The image above shows the robot serving dinner, from the movie Robot and Frank. I took this screenshot while watching the movie at home.

A household robot is also being called personal robot or domestic robot. They can be indoor, outdoor or capable of both. As of today, there are already household robots for consumers that can perform simple task like vacuum cleaning, cutting grasses, cleaning the pool etc.

Source: Wikimedia

Nowadays, Honda made a lot of significant advancement for their own version of a humanoid robot ASIMO. You can watch these advancements with this embedded video from youtube.

As you have watched, we already have a robot fully capable when it comes to human-like locomotor abilities, ASIMO can run walk and jump, it can pour a liquid into a glass, can kick a ball, can do shake-hands can talk. If robots like ASIMO started to do all the household chores and become more proficient in conversation as artificial intelligence and robotics is becoming more advance an ideal full-time household robot will now be fully materialized.

THE BUILDING OF A HOUSEHOLD ROBOT USING LEGO MINDSTORM EV3 SET

If you would like to have a bit of taste in building and programming your own household robot, there are already robotics products made available for all ages that are into robotics. In this post, I will show you the prototype of a household robot that I built using Lego Mindstorms EV3 set. This set is best to be experimented by also using all Lego products only but I want to take my experimentation to another level by using other objects such as a glass of water. I minimized the risk by doing some program test by just having my robot lift a plastic cup first without water. The water will surely damage the equipment when spilled in case the robot will fail to grab it properly.

Lego Mindstorm EV3 education set has manual that will already help you build a robot that can grab objects but you will have to use also Lego blocks and pieces for an object to be grab. Here I build one to show you the object for grabbing and the robot itself found in the manual. It is also easy to figure out how to program this model.

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TALKING ROBOT

The Lego Mindstorm includes some sensors, like ultrasonic-sensor to help to robot see distances of objects, a color sensor for color recognition, sound sensors to detect the loudness of a sound, touch sensor, gyro-sensor to detect angle rotation and temperature sensor. These sensors are enough for experimentation for adult enthusiasts and is a lot significant for a knowledge-enrichment activity for your kids to start learning mechanical and robotics concepts at an early age. If you want to achieve a talking robot prototype using the EV3 set, it has some limitation but you can still achieve it by just employing some creativity and technique in the programming. It can produce sounds, like saying okay, hi and hello, and a couple communication words are available in the system by default, however if you will combine timer and sound sensor and some programming tweak you can create a prototype that will be able to demonstrate an ability to interact a simple conversation just like what I did with this household robot.

THE BUILD

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This is the sound sensor I installed to add an ability for the robot to receive incoming sound frequencies.

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The Ultrasonic sensor right in front of it to detect the distance of any objects upfront.

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Two Large motors for the mobility.

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This is the Medium motor its rotation was converted into a grabbing mechanism through the combination of gears. I should have used a large motor in here but I discovered this is still powerful enough for the purpose of lifting at least half a glass of water.

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The claw made of beams and rubber lego parts

This claw is based on the gripper design by lego Mindstorm itself, I just modified it for this purpose. For being able to lift a glass, you will notice that I installed some rubber lego parts right at the tip of the claws so it can hold the slippery characteristics of a glass.

And here, I took a couple of pictures of this robot in two different angles.

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WHAT CAME INTO MY MIND

It was quite a challenge thinking and coming up with an idea on how can I come up with a prototype that will be able to demonstrate even a simple task that can be done in a household scenario. These are lego parts, and I must use lego objects as well for lifting. I cannot also risk too much for the motors, putting so much weight will surely break it. Again, I cannot help myself but try to push the idea of having a Lego robot lift a glass of water.

When I am busy, I used to request from my wife to get some glass of water, I also love to serve her coffee when she is busy. So It came into my mind that I think I can make a domestic robot, and to demonstrate it as a household robot, it must have the ability to receive request from user who needs a glass of water, juice or a coffee, do some simple conversation and wait for further instruction or input from the user. We have seen a lot of movie scene robots serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I guess this was enough for demonstration, we cannot put unrealistic expectation from this Lego set, having it lift a glass of water and serve it without spill is already risky and is beyond the recommendation for this type of set. The glass itself is already quite heavy for the motors made of plastics.

The idea was to make a robot that will serve a glass of water whenever requested, then when the user finishes drinking the water, the robot will get again the glass and put it back where it was.

When the program is executed the robot will wait for a signal sound, I program it to wait for a sound input greater than or equal to 10 decibels, a sound frequency that is equivalent to the loudness of a human voice when talking normally.

Yes, this is the limitation of this product it doesn’t have yet the ability to recognize specific sound patterns or a highly complex voice recognition, but it is still great, actually, it is awesome for experimentation, more than enough. Unless you started becoming a hardcore enthusiast or started becoming a robotics engineer, you certainly move to a more advanced robotics product with highly sophisticated sensors and programming.

Going back, so after the robot receives a sound equivalent to 10 decibels, let’s say for example you will say, “Water, please.” In a normal voice. yeah a conversational phrase just to make it a little more dramatic, hehe. Technically you can say whatever or produce sound above 10 decibels. Haha.

Then the robot will say “Okay” start running until it sees an object in front using the ultrasonic sensor, in this demo, it is a glass of water. Then it will grab it and deliver it to the user. The domestic robot is having the idea of a good servant, it will wait until the user drinks the water and put down the glass, then the user will say “Thank you!” again just to make it drama. Then the robot will say “Okay, dokey” and will grab the empty glass and put it back where it was.

Watch this video to see it in action.

I hope that this has been interesting and informative for you


I'd like to thank you for reading!


You may check out my Microsoft Certifications here.


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My favorite thing about this (apart from the Robot and Frank shoutout) is that it really showcases how nice it is to have a system where you can quickly make and try prototypes, like Lego.

I strongly agree with you, it is nice nowadays to have things like lego, that will allow us to quickly create a model from our imagination. A replica of real-world applied mechanisms can just be experimented out of legos. Thanks for dropping by @effofex. I highly appreciate for spending your time reading my post. I will certainly follow you

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