We’ve had a couple of visits from school robotics teams, most notably Lynn’s St Pius V’s middle-school and high-school teams, and we had a thought – combining our fabrication skills with their robotics expertise, let’s see if we can build a “trashbot” – a semi, or completely autonomous bot that can seek and destroy (or at least collect) litter in our parks and streets. Yesterday was our first design session – we pulled a bunch of spare parts and bits from our “Inspiration Zone” and laid out a few ideas. Here’s what we’ve got:
The first strategy is to mount arms with “rakes” to pick up the trash, and use small motors as winches to lift the arms – once the arms reach vertical, they dump the trash into a waiting basket or trailer. We found a couple of motors in our pile of parts, and designed some basic motor mounts on the 3D printer.
Not a bad start!
Next up – pulleys for the motors, some basic hard-wire switching, and a redesign of the rakes to pick stuff up better. Stay tuned!
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