Baby Yoda
An animatronic robot designed to intrige and relax it’s human counterpart.
The Project:
This robot, designed as part of Stanford course ME218a, is a state machine run from a PIC 32 microcontroller. User inputs are translated through mechanisms that pass information through analog and digital sensors. Baby Yoda responds to these interactions by moving his servo-operated eyes and ears, sending messages (via an SPI communication protocol) through his LED screen, and eventually rewarding the user by beaming his lightsaber.
Skills:
embedded system design
state machine design and implementation in C, SPI communication, circuit design
mechanism design
digital fabrication
CAD
Baby Yoda in Action
Electrical Design
Circuit Highlights
Baby Yoda sends messages to the user via an LED screen on his platform. The LED driver chip shares a clock line with the PIC 32 chips and decodes commands sent via the SPI buffer.
Vibration motors on top of Baby Yoda’s head are actuated based on a signal from a capacitive touch sensor and then switched on via an N-Channel MOSFET.
To maximize the brightness of Yoda’s Lightsaber, the LEDs are powered through a buffer chip at 5V.
Mechanical Design
Geared Potentiometer
Yoda’s Ears raise and lower based on an analog signal from a potentiometer connected to his silver ball. We designed a 20:1 gear system to translate the motion of an office badge reel anchored to his silver ball to the 180-degree rotation of a potentiometer.
Eye Closing and Opening
Yoda’s eye-lids are a vacuum-formed from a curved mold. The eye-lids rotate to slide between clear plastic “outer-eye” and a “inner eye.” When he “closes” his eyes, the “inner” eye is obscured by the eye-lid.
Hall Effect Pinwheel
A message scrolls across Yoda’s LED screen based on the rotation speed of his pinwheel. A latching hall-effect sensor is triggered by small magnets on the pinwheel flaps allowing us to count the pinwheel’s rotations.
Main State Diagram
The behaviors of Baby Yoda are dictated by a state machine. An event-checking framework tests for changes in state. Show below is the main state diagram representing events and actions of the robot.
