WALDO

A concept for an inexpensive robotics learning kit based on a small 3 DOF robot arm utilizing “waldo” control

Rationale

I believe our economy is about to be altered by widespread adoption of AI and automation such as self-driving cars, so it will become important for many workers to quickly reskill for jobs requiring increasingly high levels of technical literacy.

I was inspired by my own frustration with trying to learn electronics and programming, where I had initially been stymied by a combination of intimidation at the vastness of “learning programming” and boredom with typical beginner exercises like making an LED blink. In response to this, I wanted to make a beginner experience so engaging that it overwhelmed intimidation factor with sheer awesomeness. I drew inspiration from the simplicity of "manual leadthrough" programming of industrial robots and “waldo” control: controlling a device by manipulating a miniature representation of it.

Details

The exercise is to assemble and program a simple robotic arm controlled by a miniature of itself (also called a “waldo”), and the first exercise is to program it so users can play with it in real time. An Arduino microcontroller reads potentiometer positions in the waldo to control the servos in the robot.  The capability can then be expanded with more programming concepts to improve control (such as averaging potentiometer reads for smoother motion) and enable new functionality such as recording and playback of movements, with add-ons to explore sensing, voice control, coordination between robots, etc.

The code and components to achieve “waldo” functionality are very simple, so there is a very fast payoff for understanding some basic concepts. I also designed the arm to be able to be made extremely cheaply, using extremely inexpensive commodity micro servos and a minimum of parts.

I was pleasantly surprised by the intuitiveness and tactile satisfaction of my experiments in waldo control, which you can see here: