My Neighbor Coastoro

My Neighbor Coastoro!

Inspiration

You might want to have a drink holder if your drink is too cold or you might want a contraption that can hold your boba straw in place.

What it does

Place drink in Coastoro’s loving right arm. Place a straw in Coastoro’s loving left arm. Coastoro cares for you! Have him place the straw in your drink.

How we built it

As a group of CS and ME majors, we have little experience prototyping with cardboard. To build My Neighbor Coastoro, we had to think about how to connect our pieces in a clean manner. For this, we used different cardboard connecting mechanisms, such as tab/slot, stacking, and a cardboard dowel attachment for a moving arm functionality. In order to print out the pieces required to build our lad, we used the Invention Studio's laser cutter and used hot glue to put together the holder.

Challenges we ran into

A challenge we faced was creating the idea for our prototype. We had to brainstorm for some time before we knew what idea to implement for our design. In addition, we originally planned to cut cardboard by hand, but we realized how difficult this was, so we moved to the Invention Studio. Adobe Illustrator was what we wanted to use to laser cut My Neighbor Coastaro, but we were not able to set it up on our devices. We decided to use Adobe Fresco instead, which was a much smoother experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Cutting cardboard with a laser cutter for the first time, designing with dimensions, allocating work, getting it done on time!

What we learned

Designing with cardboard is not an easy task.

What's next for My Neighbor Coastoro

Coastoro is not just a neighbor, but a friend. Introduce him into the lives of everyone! To develop this model into a useable device, My Neighbor Coastaro could potentially be built with material that insulates a drink to keep it at the desired temperature. In addition, we would want to create different sizes of the coaster to be used on a variety of drinks.