Author: Diana Xu

For the midterm, Molly and I decided to make a drawing robot to mimic the huge Geometric Circular Structures made by Marine Pufferfish.

Description

Male pufferfishes construct this structure for female mate choice in reproductive cycles. They use this structure to attract female pufferfishes and collect fine sand particles. They will build new geometric structures in every new reproductive cycle.

Methods:

We are using Kittenbot for drawing, with a magnet attached to it. A sand table with a magnet ball will be set above the Kittenbot. When Kittenbot moves, the magnet will draw patterns in the sand.

Reference: 

Role of Huge Geometric Circular Structures in the Reproduction of a Marine Pufferfish

Sisyphus Table: Where Art and Technology Merge

PART A

Plan

Since we have two people, Kennedy and I decided to build Attractive and Repulsive. Attractive is a creature that moves forward when it receives a light signal, and Repulsive is a slow creature that continuously moves forward. We used Radio function and light sensor on Microbit for the signal communication.

Program

For Attractive:
    Initial: keep still
    When lightness is bigger than 6: move and send a signal
    Else: keep still

For Repulsive:
    Initial: move with LED turning around
    When receives a signal: stop
    Else: keep moving

I deleted all of the code by accident 🙁 

Video documentation:

PART B

Draw:

Inspiration:

My drawing:

Analyze:

My inspiration is a robot called HEXA. It’s a programmable, highly maneuverable robot. One interesting application of this robot is to carry plants around to make sure they have enough sunshine. Our Attractive and Repulsive robots reminded me of Tom and Jerry. So I found this chasing behavior is really interesting. I imagine there will be a “cat” robot to catch rats.

Remix:

Our robots were able to chase, but they can’t avoid the obstacles. So we added the avoiding obstacles functions to the robots. It took us a while. And it’s hard for Repulsive to do detect obstacles because the distance sensor keeps moving around.

Reflect:

We followed the descriptions in the essay and made it more complicated. But one thing we gave up is to locate Attractive robot. The two robots move around randomly and detect each other when they are in certain ranges.  If we want to make them look like the real “Tom and Jerry”, we need to figure out how to locate them.