Robarto

Front View
Rear View
Inside the Unit

Inspiration

Smart appliances, and the idea of owning a smart home has begun to gain traction recently, and this opens the door for a wide variety of in home smart tools. The three of us are all excited about the growing market of smart appliances, so we though we would attempt to hack a "College Appliance" in the form of a automatic cocktail maker.

What it does

Robarto is not so much an it, but a he. Truly he is officially the unofficial 4th member of our team. User's may select an existing cocktail, or create their own, using Robarto's User interface via a nearby computer. Robarto receives the commands over serial via his on board Arduino Uno, which manages the numerous servos that drive his swift drink making motions. After receiving the drink recipe, Robarto springs into action, rotating around collecting the requested fluid ounces of each liquid. Finally after his graceful display, Robarto's arm comes to a sweeping halt offering you the fruit of his labor.

How we built it

Our team consists of two Computer Engineers, and a Mechanical Engineer, which allowed us to divide the work very cleanly. The Mechanical Engineer, James, focused mostly on the hardware components of the build, designing the valves as well as the housing for Robarto. Daniel, one of the two Computer Engineers worked closely with James, helping to develop the housing, while also programming the Arduino and servos. Ray, the second Computer Engineer, developed Robarto's GUI. While staying mostly modular, we were able to bring all our parts together, creating a cohesive project.

Challenges we ran into

We were plagued by early failure, as valve design after valve design failed to provide consistent results. We ended up having an epiphany while on a last ditch Walmart run for supplies. We had been looking at the problem all wrong, the valve mechanism needs to have a default state of closed to really function normally. Most of our previous designs had focused on using magnets to hold the liquid back; however our new design simply pinches a rubber tube shut until a servo pulls the pinching unit back allowing fluid to flow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a working valve! By far our biggest struggle was getting the valve to function correctly, and being that it was a critical part of our project's design, we needed to get it right.