Andrew Burks

The second lab in my robotic manipulation class involves telling time with the 6-axis denso robot arms.  My lab partner Nico Paris and I decided we wanted to tell time by drawing lines on a white board and erasing them.

Instead of drawing numbers, we are drawing 9 equally spaced lines radially out from a point.  No line translates to “0” and some number of lines corresponds to that digit.  There are 6 of these sets of lines, corresponding to two hours digits, two minutes digits, and two seconds digits.

In order to draw and erase lines, I got to make a cool tool for the robot to hold.  By rotating its last joint by 90 degrees the robot can switch between the pen and eraser.  What’s even cooler is the spring built in to the pen part of the assembly to allow for some compliance without totally squishing the pen!

Here is a render of the tool, and a cross section to demonstrate the compliance in the pen.  Photos and video of the final product in action are forthcoming.  We demo the design on October 18th.