For this group project, we decide to design something that can solve problem for the cat owners. Echo and I are both cat owners, therefore, we raise some common problem during we take care of them, for example, cats are always losing their hair; Cleaning their toilet is not a good experience for us; and we have to clean their food bowl every day. After discussion, we decide to design an auto cleaned bowl for the cat owners.
The three categories of out design are: discursive agenda, performance, and enchanted object. In my opinion, I think the how to make it follow the discursive agenda is the most difficult part of out project. We think raising a pet is a good way for human to get close to the nature. However, we have to spend a lot of time and spirits on our pet, with the development of technology, more and more automated pet supplies have emerged, but how to find a balance between “automatic feeding” and the experience of taking care of cats is a problem we hope to solve.
For the part of the enchanted object, considering the people’s love for the versatile robotic arm, we decided to make a manipulator that can be manipulated and combine it with the cat food bowl to form a cat bowl that can be cleaned automatically. We used two servos to make this product, one to control the cleaning part and the other to control the angle of the arm. The two servos are controlled by two buttons. That is to say, the front arm in the initial state is horizontal to the ground. When the user presses the control button, the arm will rotate 90 degrees, and the cleaned part will reach the bottom of the bowl. After the user presses the second button, the second servo moves the cleaning cloth to rotate. At first, we dug a hole in the foam base and put the plastic bowl in, but the robotic arm would get stuck because of the bowl when it was rotating, and it could not rotate normally. After encountering this problem, we decided to make the cat bowl with a plastic bag and dig the base so that the arm could pass freely.
In the cleaning part we got inspiration from the lint roller. We changed the traditional thinking of using water to clean, and we used cotton to make a washer that can be used to remove the used parts. After many failures, we found that the viscosity of the lint roller is the most appropriate. The adhesiveness of the double-sided adhesive will damage the cotton cloth, so we put the material in the order of a layer of cotton cloth and a layer of stickers to make a cleaning part. And we added instructions below the button, we marked “wash” and “up” respectively, so that users can think less when using, enhance the experience.