Ron The Robot
Client:
Footlocker
Project Type: Robotics
On of my favourite project from 2022, was a brief to build a engaging robotic arm feature for the footlockers store on Oxford street. Originally we planned to use a more powerful robot arm with a mount to hold to shoe, however due to customs we never received a the type of robotic arm we required to hold a shoe. This left me with 4 days before the install or find a robotic arm and build a interactive experience with it, by the time we sourced a educational development robot, called Dobot magician from Dover, had a weekend to build the experience.
I landed on a puzzle building robot that moved types around to build and make product stills that where sliced into 4 sections. The user would press a red activation button on the unit and the robot would move 1 of 4 tiles off the plates, then place a replace the moved tiles with the next part of the image in the correct orientation and repeat until the total image was replaced. The puzzle pieces then would be spread around the activation space so it appears to be picking from a random piles of possible part.
Rapid Prototyping
The development of this project require a lot of rapid on the fly thinking, and I did a lot of testing over the weekend with robot and it suction cup gripper to determine how accurate the robot would be. Due to the nature of the robot, the position would drift over a few hrs of operation, so I developed a design that would help re-position puzzle pieces after the suction cup would let go as well as modify the robot to perform a homing function before playing the key framed animation.
The design of the puzzle pieces uses a angled cross shaped with a corresponding cross pattern on a positioning plate. This meant after the robot dropped the puzzle piece with the gripper the cross pattern would re-align in both the X and Y axis, meaning the next time the robot picked up this piece the robot would be picking it up in the same places, reducing the drift.
Reflection
Between the rapid ideation and testing and quick problem solving, this is one of my favour jobs that require me thinking on the fly with a range of skill set from robotics, CAD, 3d printing and client coms. The output had great feedback and the install ended with a crowed on lookers watching me animated and program the arm, which was fun experience in itself.