E-TOG BKK| Create a Mascot
Create a Mascot
E-TOG Interactive Solar System Educating Robot
Summary
Every child wants to learn and explore the secrets of the universe, and also want to play with toys like r2 d2.However, it does not exist in real world, or is it? Here is E-TOG, an interactive space toy that teaches Solar System for 7-12 age children. Thanks to buttons located on E-TOG, it shows the name of that planet on screen and inform children about each planet. E-TOG uses electricity generated by a wind turbine located on the top of it. We are Eternal TraKShine of Galaxy BK - Teaching Galaxy All the Way.For more info and contact info: https://etogbk.co/index.html
How We Addressed This Challenge
Our object is to create a mascot that explains anything related to Earth and space in short. So, we built up a robot that smiles, attracts children to press on buttons on it and shows planet names matching with pictures. Moreover, it gives brief information with sound to the user. It is very important because, we could not see any R2D2, C3P0 or other toy robots that teaches space, galaxy or shows galaxy pictures and wants children to match them. We thought if we can make a toy which also generates its electricity by using a wind turbine whenever a child runs together with him, it will become a new Rubik's cube. It is technological, uses renewable energy and interactive. We claim that if E-TOG will be designed very well , it can even has a role in a Star Wars movie/cartoon etc. and becomes #1 teaching material for space teaching. Last but not least, it can be programmed in different ways to teach many other objects like earth sciences, math, literature, history and maybe one day it may played as a competition toy that involves trivia check etc. inside where children can win points by achieving new levels in quizes. That is what we are willing to achieve.
How We Developed This Project
As a Star Wars Fan, I always wanted R2D2 toy at its original sizes (Noyan- team member). When we saw your objectives, creating a mascot seemed quite interesting. After that we came up to an idea which a robot teaches children interactively in. Because, there is no toy that explains universe as we did in that project. First of all we developed a simple robot design at first. This was the first but one of the most important part of the project because design will the first criteria that attracts children to play with. Thus, we came up to a conclusion to build a Wall-E a-like robot that has a box shape body and a rectangular head. Eyes must be fixed whereas mouth needs to be consist of something active, like a screen. So, we used an LCD screen to show robots mouth as smiling. We combined buttons and LED's to printed planet photos and connected everything to Arduino Uno card. Due to lack of material, we used an old smart phone for the interactive touch screen part for children to be taught by E-TOG (our mascot). We wrote a simple program using appinventor of MIT. In practice whenever a child presses the button under each planet picture, LED turns on and LCD mouth of robot shows the name of that planet. Then, children uses smartphone app to press on the planet (or Sun) button that the name shown on LCD matches with. As a result, all the brief information regarding to that space object is explained by sounds recorded before. The main problem is the body of robot, which we made with Lego bricks. The reason was, Lego bricks are easy to create a very fast prototype, but they are not durable and difficult to assemble small LED's or take out electrical cables in between them. Nevertheless this is just the prototype part, and so we build up everything that is fully functional but not assembled well. In a different time we aim to build E-GOT by using 3d printed material and with less cables shown on it.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We used planet pictures gathered from NASA website. Also thanks to organization by using GoDaddy promotion we have created a website https://etogbk.co/index.html
Project Demo
https://youtu.be/tL_SV5rBoCI --- Our presentation video link of 30 secs.
Below are our prototype pictures.
