Proposal A - Whiteboard Robot

Problem:

Whiteboards are great tools that are used a lot in our academic setting, as they rely on people to clean them, this task can be tedious and often simply forgotten, this leaves us with some issues.

• Stains the board: when people forget to clean the board, the ink dries out and becomes more difficult to remove, maybe even leading to permanent stains and a "ghosting" that ruins the board's surface.
• Wastes time for the next user: the task of cleaning is passed on to the next person, which often leads to waste time at the beginning of a class, causing frustration due to the unnecessary delays.
• It's a repetitive chore: as any chore that requires manual labor, it becomes repetitive doing it after a class is over day after day, this suggests that automation may be applicable.

Proposed Solution:

Our solution proposes that a small robot will be coupled to a whiteboard to perform the tasks.

• The robot’s movement structure is made with aluminium profiles and threaded rods.
• The pens and the eraser, which will be a pen-like structure with an eraser at the end, will be stored in a barrel structure.
• The main moving structure will contain a barrel pen holder which can be used to draw and erase whenever it’s desired. This structure will spin assisted by a servo motor, allowing for quick positioning of the pen into position to adequately draw, then, the pen can be pushed forward into the whiteboard to draw.
• A camera will be placed in the structure to check if a user has been present in the last few minutes and erase the board to prevent the paint from drying.
• In order to draw, an image can be sent to the robot via the internet. The robot will then process the image and follow the lines accordingly.

Components:

How it works: