Steve Hazel: "Welcome To Robot Land"
"You've entered a world full of robotic devices that act upon your will. On this particular adventure you shall experience THE ARM. From here on out there will be no further placing of CD's manually. This mechanism along with its artificial intelligence will, on command, take the CD that you have chosen and promptly place it in the CD player. There is no need to operate that either. It is taken care of. Just sit back, relax and choose away................"
What my
intro eludes to is my project, the CD jukebox - "THE ARM." It has
another name, "Amy," because the robot gave me just as much trouble as
she did ;-) The Arm was very intricately designed as
four main pieces. First, there was a motor to move the arm from right to
left just as the shoulder would. Next, there was a large motor to
swing the arm similar to how the elbow acts. Then, a third smaller
motor sat near the end of the arm to turn the CD as your wrist would.
Finally, at the end of the arm there is a gripper mechanism that grabs
the CD as a hand would.
The first
motor moves the arm back and forth to select a CD from the rack opposite
the arm. then the elbow motor would swing down the gripper to the center
of a vertical CD. The gripper would retract and move inside the center
hole. It would then release and the elbow would swing back the CD.
The shoulder motor then takes the arm in front of the CD player.
A signal from the computer opens it, the wrist motor turns the CD to be
horizontal and the elbow places it in the drive, and it closes.
When you're
done with the CD you simply hit "enter" and it replaces it for you, then
asks if you would like to choose again. You never have to get up and manually
place a CD into its player again............... (see
project complications)