The Flower Robot

Final images:

1. Top view 1:

2. Top view 2:

3. Side View:

This project is an interactive and sensitive (human-like) robot. Arduino is the control device. It presents some human emotions when interacting with the audience.

My inspiration of the design is from a video about the carnivorous plants that I watched on YouTube. It showed the carnivorous plants how to catch insects or other animals smoothly. The research flora and fauna world shows that some plants to most animals can express their emotions. Many carnivorous plants present their simple emotions like animals when they are hunting foods. I chose this kind of plants as my inspiration, and used Arduino as a control system to design an interactive and funny robot. Arduino is an excellent interactive platform for designing a human-like machine. Because using different kinds of sensors can create a machine moving logically as Braitenberg vehicles. The processes of design are the involvement, the excitement, and the emotional enjoyment for me.

I started my design from researching mechanical information of Arduino sensors. Some books are quite useful, such as Tom Igoe’s “Making thinks talk”. The form of robot is designed on the sketches a few times, and then I used the paper to cut the different parts to do the experiments. The final material I chose is acrylic sheet using laser cutting.

The structure of Flower Robot

The form of the robot I designed is an opening flower. It consisted of three parts: 32 flower petals, two servo motors and arduino. It is called “Flower Robot”.

The petals are made of acrylic board are shaped by laser cutter. Its abstract shape is from Maori traditional patterns. The flower comprised two layers of flower petals with 16 petals in each layer. The top level is the robot’s head, and the second level is its body.

The two servo motors are combined together and can move 180 degree on a horizontal axis. Each motor moves individually and they are controlled by the variables received by the Arduino.

The ultra sensor is on the top level and it sends the digital data to Arduino. In another word, it is the Flower Robot’s eyes. Arduino sit on the bottom platform with two batteries and one breadboard.

The environment of installation

The Flower Robot will be installed on a white wall or door, and be under a ray of bright and comfortable light from top. The robot’s eyes (the sensor) will faces and interact directly with the audience.

The emotions of Flower Robot

When interacting with the audience, the robot can express 3 different motions:

1. Encountering —– Exciting (rotating);
2. Touching — Fear (dodging);
3. Say goodbye — Depression (staring).

1. Exciting:

Exciting or Joy has shades of enjoyment, satisfaction and pleasure. Often when people are happy, they sing and dance.

The flower robot will be moving its head and body fast when the audience changes his/her position or do some actions in front of it. It communicates with the audience by shaking and rotating its head and body.

2. Fear:

Fear can be a feeling in that you talk yourself into being afraid of something in the future. But fear can also be a “gut reaction” in the sense that people’s “reptile brain,” that is, the oldest part of our brain from before our evolved as a human being, automatically reacts to danger. This can result in physiological responses such as dodging, sweating and trembling etc.

If the audience moves his/her hands near the top of flower robot, the robot will be dodging and express that it does not want to be touched. When the audience’s hands stop, the robot’s head keeps same pose until the hands move away. Its sensitive zone is between 20cm to 30cm.

3. Depression:

Depression is a serious condition characterized by a persistent sad mood, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, and the inability to feel pleasure or happiness.

When there is no audience near the robot, it will feel sad and lonely; and it will turn down its head and remain in this posture until someone comes around.

Despite above, different people may interpret the Flower Robot emotions differently, depending on his/her imagination. Also, further improvements can be made to the robot to incorporate more movements and emotions. For example, after modification, each petal can move individually and simulate the hunting process of a carnivorous plant.

1. Drosera-Rosiczki

2. Drosera Capensis

1. Examples of Carnivorous plants:

2. Possible structure using for Robot:

3. Another example of Robot form (maybe combine them):

images source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Drosera_capensis

The final robot works with audience interactively, three emotions will be presented in different periods:
Meeting —– Surprise;
Feeding — Happiness;
Say goodbye — Depression.

Spherical Robot 02 from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

Spherical Robot 01 from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

http://www.nilsvoelker.com/nxt/spherical/index.html

have a look!

Second:

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/2164

Joy
Joy or happiness has shades of enjoyment, satisfaction and pleasure. There is a sense of well-being, inner peace, love, safety and contentment. There is an existence of both, positive thinking and positive activities.
The first secondary emotion is “cheerfulness”. This comprises of a myriad of tertiary emotions like:
     Amusement
     Ecstasy
     Gaiety
     Euphoria
     Bliss
     Elation
     Delight
     Happiness
     Jubilation

Sadness
Sadness is necessarily related to a feeling of loss and disadvantage. If this feeling drowns the individual it may lead to a state of depression. When a person can be observed to be quiet, less energetic and withdrawn to himself it may be inferred that sadness exists. Such an individual usually has a sloping body, stuck out lips and a downcast appearance of the head.
Directly related to sadness, the following tertiary emotions can be displayed:
     Depression
     Unhappiness
     Misery
     Melancholy
     Gloom
     Despair

Surprise
Surprise means the showing up of an unexpected result. When one experiences surprise, it is accompanied by raising of the eyebrows, horizontal lines on the forehead, open mouth, stretched skin below the eyebrows and wide open eyelids. Depending on the intensity, the mouth may not open, but only the jaw may drop. A momentary raise in the eyebrows is the most common evidence of surprise.
There are related tertiary emotions like:
     Astonishment
     Amazement

During the interactive period between machine and user, my human-like machine will present three emotions in different moments:
     Meeting —– Surprise
     Face to face — Happiness;
     Say goodbye — Depression.