Baby Yoda Animatronic

This project was for a State Competition for the Technology Student Association(TSA) Club. My team placed 3rd place at the state level and qualified for nationals(although we did not compete due to travel costs). For this competition, we had to build an animatronic for a children's hospital waiting room. I built and coded a majority of our animatronic while my team members worked on the aesthetics and scenery of our animatronic

For our entry, our team of 3 students built a Baby Yoda Animatronic that would play Peekaboo with its ears and could use the force to lift a rock. We built our animatronic out of two EV3 robotics kits. We were also required to use hydraulics in our entry so we used 2 syringes connected with a long tube filled with water. One syringe was actuated by two EV3 motors and the other syringe was connected to an invisible wire that lifted the rock. We used two Ultrasonic sensors to control both mechanisms.

The code for the Peekaboo sequence had many different ways that it could play Peekaboo that it switched between whenever an Ultrasonic Sensor detected someone standing at our animatronic. It also played different phrases and sounds whenever it played with someone so it felt more real.

The code for the lifting rock would raise the rock whenever someone put their hand above the sensor and would also raise baby yoda's hand as the rock was lifted. We decided on these mechanisms for this competition because we wanted to make children who saw our animatronic at the hospital smile and feel powerful by letting them play Peekaboo with Baby Yoda and giving them the ability to use the force with him.