Friday Night MANOI! (Replaced by Bubble Boy, again)

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Bubble Boy is finished!

I just have to add some finishing touches! I’m envisioning a top hat (like the one on Frosty the snowman), and googly eyes and a biiiiiig smile.
Here is the video:

Here are some pictures- I didn’t take many though!

That’s all for this week. It was a pretty exciting week, though!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

$100 from my mom

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

My mom just donated $100 towards my BubbleBoy project!

Wow - all this generosity in a few days!

THANK YOU!!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

Bubble Boy WORX!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, April 6th, 2008

Energy is the ability to do WORX! Meaning that… Bubble Boy works.
Here is a video- (with more funky music!)

And pictures-

Hiphip Hooray!

What I had to do to get it to work was stagger the servos. Then I put lots of hot glue into the holes that were punctured into the styrofoam so everything was secure. After that, I plugged in 4 paperclips and attached them to wire which attached to separate sides of the two servo horns. YIPEE!

Oh yes- although this post was published on April 11th, the content was actually from April 5th.
Friday Night MANOI (Replaced by Bubble Boy Again) will be up sometime this weekend due to my HW schedule Keep an eye out for it

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

Friday Night MANOI - replaced by BUBBLE BOY!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 28th, 2008

That’s right! My usual Friday night MANOI was replaced by Friday night BUBBLE BOY! Pinky was renamed to Bubble Boy as, not only is it more bubblicious, but it also reminds us of Seinfeld. (Nope, the answer is MOOPS!) (<--- Seinfeld joke)

Trying to get it all to work out was pretty a pretty intense thought process. At least, it seemed that way relative to a Friday. Relative to a Monday morning, the thought process could be described as easy. The way Bubble Boy (lol) will rock back and forth, and from side to side is that there will be two servos embedded into the side of the bottom ball. On the servo horns will be string, which will be attached to a paperclip. From there, the paperclip plugs easily into the cross on the top ball.

The reason why I chose paperclips rather than anything else is because it allows more movement. For example, if the top ball moves to the left, the back and forth ones will not constrain this movement. Pretty neat, eh! I'll probably strengthen the cross tomorrow, after I replace the elastic string I used.

This brings me to another point. There isn't much string around, so the first thing I saw, I grabbed. Elasticy string. I thought it would probably work out, but it didn't. Tomorrow I'll replace it with bunchels of thread, or yarn - depending on what mood I am in. (Yarn is bigger - thread is smaller).

These photos show the progress of the process.

During the weekend, keep an eye out for:
- Blog post about Autism & Robots & Robbie
- Blog post (hopefully) about a working Bubble Boy
- YouTube video (hopefully) about Bubble Boy
- Blog post about a very fun Physics lab

Happy Friday night BUBBLE BOY!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.