Weekly reflections

WEEK 6

Almost Useless Machines

This week, our goal was to create an "almost useless machine". The point of the activity was to build our coding, fabrication and mechanical skills. By combining all these different components, the result would be some sort of automatized machine, whose inputs and outputs could be determined by us. The extra layer of challenge was to use primarily "old" components from the electronics we took apart last week.

Before beginning the task at hand, we divided into the most balanced groups possible, containing someone who knows electronic basics, someone who had experience with 3D modelling, another person who had a background in project management and a person with fabrication design skills. My group consisted of Julia, Gerda, Angel, Jeremy and me. I was very grateful to be partnered with these people, because our skills turned out to be very complimentary towards the end of the project.

We began to sketch out some ideas and brainstorm on the possible robots we could create. We decided to pursue something that would loop infinitely, reproducing the same moments over and over again. We thought of a ball being picked up and thrown into a trash can repeatedly, and laughed at the pointlessness of it. The machine was inspired by the ironies of what we call a “circular” ecology; and the waste cycle that we produce, entering our oceans and ultimately ending up back in our bodies again. We wanted to convey a feeling of hopelessness: when you throw trash away it will always come back to be dealt with again.

We decided that the ball of trash would go down some slides and fall into a pool of water, possibly dirtying it repeatedly. We also ideated human interaction with the use of a button, allowing the ball to fall through a sliding door that would avoid the usual path. This human intervention would lessen the dirty accumulation in the pool of water.

The bazaar.

There was a moment we called “the bazaar” when we could choose pieces of junk to be used in our project. Many of the materials consisted of components from the old electronic appliances we took apart last week, but there were also a few new sensors or electronic components too. The idea was to prioritize the use of scrap materials, and rethink what could be done with them.

We chose to utilise these main components in our machine:

• Motor from CD-ROM drive (from macbook)
• Motorised wheels (from roomba)
• Electromagnet (new)
• Button (new)
• Cables and circuit board to connect everything (part of our MDEF toolkit)

With these components in mind, we also clearly defined the structure of the entire loop:

A robotic arm picks a metal ball up with an electromagnet and transports it to the top of the ramp. The ball falls down the ramp, which is filled with coffee grounds making it dirty on the way down, and falls into a water basin. The dirt from the ramps starts to “pollute” the water. The ball falls to the bottom end of the basin the arm repeats. There is an option for the human to interact, where they would press a button and allow the ball to fall directly into the water without “polluting” it.

Once this was set in stone, our strategy was to split into two smaller groups: while Julia and Gerda worked on the structure of the machine, Jeremy and I worked on the mechatronics and Angel started building the graphics of the final presentation. Julia and Gerda’s main tasks were laser cutting the plywood arm, torching acrylic into slide shapes, connecting them to wooden poles, building base structure and 3D modelling specific joint attachments.

trying to automate the robotic arm movements- the difficulty was trying to understand where the boundaries of each arm's axis should be

Although I wouldn’t consider myself a mechanics or electronics pro, I am happy to say that I was confident in assisting Jeremy with the tasks we needed to complete. I learned how to solder wires, how different kinds of relays operated, how to change the rotation of each motor, and why each electronic component was put in a specific position. I was also corrected multiple times when I drew the electronic symbols a little bit too creatively.

Jeremy was definitely the lead when it came to the arduino and the circuit board, but I would say that I was his (helpful and eager) assistant. I wired the breadboard, transcribed the electronics diagram and provided my opinion when it came to certain parts of the code.

Jeremy's electronics diagram which I transcribed onto my iPad.

If I’m being honest, I had a few moments this week where I lacked a sense of direction and was unsure whether we would complete our project in time. This feeling was not caused by the instructions being unclear, but it stemmed more so from inside of me. Having absorbed so much variety of information in such a short amount of time over the past few weeks, I could feel my interests pulling and tugging me in different directions, without having a sense of clarity as to which ones I actually wanted to pursue. This week was the moment it really hit me, the feeling that some classmates have already been going through, and that some will very likely go through in the upcoming weeks too.

Even though the projects I was working on were interesting and intriguing, I felt like I had put in a lot of effort yet yielded unpromising results. It seemed like our groups were always rushing to conclude the assignment, without much conviction on the purpose of all the work that we had put into it. Maybe this is a stark contrast to how I was used to working, given that since the beginning of the year I had been working on my thesis in solitude, due to the pandemic and it being my final bachelor’s project. I am no longer used to the short, collaborative, “useless” experiments just for the fun of it. Maybe I just wanted to feel a sense of conclusion when they were done. But I hadn’t so far and it began to frustrate me.

However, by Friday afternoon, we managed to achieve our goals despite not being sure about whether we would have managed to do so. Jeremy finalised the automations, Julia and Gerda hammered and drilled the last parts, Angel refined our storyboard and I softened any rough edges on our machine, sweeping away the dust and coffee grounds from the base with our mini broom (a paint brush). By lunchtime, we managed to get everything together and film our Almost Useless Machine in action.

me polishing up the final set using my mini broom

Upon the completion of the project, we were surprised yet proud, and rightfully so because the result was basically a handmade robotic arm, designed and completed in less than four days. Here are our proud faces:

Me, Julia, Gerda, Angel and Jeremy

The final photos and videos

The final presentation can be viewed here. (you may need to log in with your IAAC email)

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