What?

Doge Clean is a modular cleaning attachment made to mount under or behind preexisting robots in the NuVu space. It uses a modified tooth brush to vigorously scrub the floor with an “all natural cleaning solution” (dispensed from an aftermarket car windshield wiper fluid system). Running on Arduino, held by zip ties, and fueled by the essence of hacking, this little unit is ready to scrub away the competition.

Why/ How:

Doge Clean spawned from the need to clean the polished cement floors at NuVu, with the idea of attaching to the Telepresence Robot (v2). This way the arduous task of scrubbing the floor can be done with little to no effort, and make use of other hardware. The inspiration for the cleaning heads came from a hacked version of the Hex Bug toy which is essentially a pager motor on a toothbrush. In a similar manner, the cleaning heads on Doge Clean, use the bristles from toothbrushes. Why not use a better brush? Well, toothbrushes are cheap, durable, easy to replace, and they are extremely efficient at cleaning a small space with just a little effort; Even the military uses toothbrushes to scrub the floor! The toothbrushes were also chosen based on the reduced size and durability. Other aspects of the design were inspired by industrial floor cleaners used in stores such as Home Depot or Walmart. These machines put a cleaning solution on the floor, then proceed to scrub, vacuum, and squeegee the floor. Seeing as we couldn’t install a vacuum and a squeegee into NuVu’s space, we focused on the brush head and decided to drag a towel behind the cleaning heads to dry the floor.

During the cleaning robot studio we decided to make a mechanical white board eraser that could automatically clean. We also wanted it to be able to work on any whiteboard and easy to use for anyone. Our white board cleaning robot was inspired by window cleaning robots. We really liked how window cleaning robots made cleaning easier, the versatility and simplicity of the design. White boards are important to the future of education because they make collaborative work easier and are also useful in many other professional settings. They are particularly practical in group settings because they allow many different people to get their ideas down without wasting paper. The demand for white boards inspired us to make a robot that would help save people time. Our white board cleaning robot is easy to use and can be used on most white boards. The white board cleaner is powered through a wall plug and two motors. It is directed with a code written with Arduino. The code makes the robot move back and forth with sensor on each end. We designed a linear actuator to allow the movement of the eraser with a threaded road. The simplicity of the design makes it accessible to the general public. 

Version 1:

Belt Driven design proved unreliable, Single Stepper Motor with low torque, Four Brush Wheels, and 28 Zip-ties

Version  1.2:

Five Gears, Single Stepper Motor, Four Brush Wheels, and 28 Zip-ties. Gears had low reliability but worked

Version 2 (Final By Chris and Sam):

Six “New” Gears (more reliable and stronger), two stepper motors for higher torque, four brush wheels, 16 toothbrushes, One Aftermarket Car Windshield Wiper Fluid Dispenser Kit, and 60+ Zip-ties.

Version 3:

TBA, Features will include stronger motors, better cleaning heads, and simpler attachment methods.

Our group’s first idea was to make robot that cleaned big office glass windows, having the robot move across the floor and up the window. That did not work because the upwards motion would go against the gravity. This led to making a robot that cleans whiteboards.

Our idea for making the whiteboard was to make a robot/moving cart that moves left and right across the top the board. Also, the robot would have an expo eraser at the end of the pole that moved up and down the board. First, our group worked on making a holder for the motor, which took a long time. Rhinoceros, a 3-D software modeling program, was a challenge to use at first. It was a new software we have never used. After the holder was designed on Rhinoceros, it was time to print this piece in the laser cutter. This is also another process because we had to make different versions of the piece and use different materials that included paper, cardboard and wood. The designs that were made along the way changed very much. It started out as a little cart that moved with four wheels across the floor and then changed into a cart that moved across the top of a white board.

One day of working on the project, a few problems occurred on how to move the robot across the whiteboard. Our group decided to build double tracks, out of wood, and put them on both sides of the board and have the cart move along them with two wheels on one side and another wheel on the other, which would be attached to a motor. Also, there would be four holders across the whiteboard to make sure the track was stable. Then the wheels were made out of acrylic so it would ride across the tracks. This feature finally made our robot move smoothly across the board. 

When our group first started this project we did not finish, so we are now finishing it for our independent projects. We decided to take this opportunity to work on it because we felt very passionate about making it work. Our main focus was how to make this move vertically so it would actually clean the entire whiteboard.

First, the decision was to use a threaded rod and two wooden rods as the mechanism that will create the up and down motion. Also, switches were added to the ends of the robot so it would hit the ends of the track, so the robot would know when to go left and right. Then a switch was added to the bottom of the robot so it would know when to move up and down.

Once the programming was done on Arduino our group remade the robot holder. The box design makes the project easier to work and all the cords will all be placed in this box so it looks very neat. Overall, we loved being part of this project and are extremely proud of what we accomplished.