Prototyping with Arduino

Arduino is an open source electronics kit. It allows designers to prototype real products and designs fairly quickly in high fidelity through different sensors, inputs, and outputs. Working with Arduino has allowed me to create prototypes that can be put into real environments and used much like an actual product would be used. Once built, it becomes fairly easy to make changes to how a design behaves in a given environment. Arduino prototypes are often much easier to take to production given the high fidelity and actual working components. Arduino also allows for designers to better understand their design in-situ with real people.

S.A.S.C.R.

Overview

My project for prototyping with Arduino was to build a robot that I named SASCR, which stands for Socially Awkward Self Charging Robot. The basic idea was the this robot would listen for noises and move away from them, in a fashion much like a socially awkard person might. Further, SASCR would eventually have to recharge his batteries and would have to get over his fear of people and come out into the light to charge up. My goal was to prototype the socially awkwardness of the robot, put him in a room full of people, and see what happens. While my focus was on building the robot, I was also very interested in understanding how people might view a robot that was socially awkward and ran away from them.

Process

In order to build SASCR I used a Arduino as the 'brains' and a rumble robot as a body and wheel set. I built SASCR in multiple stages and tore down and rebuilt him many, many times. I started with a quick sketch, went on to learning how to control motors, built up the audio sensor system, and finally put everything together on a new body.