robotmatrix.org

 Introduction

• Objective: This robot has a plastic spoon attached to its end. It dips into tilted jars of coffee and sugar, carries spoons of granules to the coffee cup and pours them in. A spoon of milk is then added at lower left and the cup of coffee is stirred.
• Parts:
  • Robix Rascal Robot Kit/Construction Set
  • Sugar, instant coffee, creamer, cup with warm water, jar stands, etc., or pie pan filled with 2 pounds/1 kg of dried beans, or rice, and a cup.
  • Rubber band or medium (3/4?, 20mm) binder clips, to hold spoon in place.
• To learn: Sometimes, a robot needs to work with preexisting setups or ?fixtures? which it is impractical to modify. In these cases the robot needs to increased flexibility. Robots that do spray-painting are a good example. The robots have to reach around inside car bodies. As such, it needs to increase the number of axes for robots to adjust to "reach around" situations.

 Step 1: Build the robot peripherals

• The stand to hold the jars tilted was made from cardboard which was cut, bent and glued.
• You can substitute coffee and creamer with a pie pan full of dried white beans. Alternatively, you can also use uncooked rice as the replacement.

 Step 2: Assemble and build the Coffee Maker Robot Body and Muscle

First, build the robot with only 4 axes. You can follow the Golfer Robot project. Replace last link on the Golfer robot with a link as shown in the drawing, and use some rubber bands to attach the spoon to it. You can now dig into the suggested a pie pan of beans and spoon them into a cup.

After you've played with the 4-axis, you can proceed to add another axis to see how this can helps the robot to access to the spots and angles you want.

 Step 3: Coffee Maker Robot Teaching and Macro Programming

It is difficult to teach the robot because there is a wide choice of ?pickup? and ?delivery? locations in the work area. Furthermore, these locations are very close to each other. Hence, please try to use lower speeds and acceleration when carrying the liquid, beans, rice, etc.