Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
48 Automated Multi-Mode Garment Folding System with Arduino Control
 Bryson Maedge
Nolan Opalski
Tyler Hirsch
 Angquan Yu design_document1.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
**Automated Multi-Mode Garment Folding System with Arduino Control**

Nolan Opalski nolanfo2
Tyler Hirsh thirsh3
Bryson Maedge bmaedge2

**Problem**
No one likes to fold laundry. It's dull, boring, and tedious. The only positive is that it gives you an excuse to listen to your favorite podcast that you may have had a backlog on. On top of that, folding laundry can prove to be a difficult task for the elderly and disabled. In commercial settings, employees of large retail clothing stores have reported getting carpal tunnel syndrome from the repetitive and manual task of folding clothes.

**Solution**
To solve this crisis, we want to create an automated multi-mode clothes folding system. This will allow the user to decrease the time and effort involved in folding laundry. The system will have four modes of folding; one for short sleeved shirts, one for long sleeve shirts, one for shorts, and one for pants. The system will also dispense folded clothes onto a pile, thus only requiring the user to load the machine and collect the pile once it reaches the maximum height. All of this will be performed at the touch of a button allowing minimal manual, tedious labor.

**Subsystem Components**

**Mode Selection**
This subsystem will comprise four modes that the user will select in order to fold either a short sleeve t-shirt, a long sleeve t-shirt, shorts, or pants. This subsystem will take the user’s input and send a signal to the arduino control. The mode selection will be four buttons feeding a three digit binary signal representing the four different modes created by logic gates. The first digit will represent the actuation of the machine to start its function with one being “on” and zero being “off”. The two lowest bits will represent each of the four modes.

**Arduino Control**
This subsystem will contain the software to operate the machine. The inputs are described within the “Mode Selection” subsystem. Based on what input is received, the software will send signals to switches/transformer/power supply (still need to decide what would be best/most cost-efficient) to power the servos. It will also send a signal to the servos indicating which direction the servo should turn. The software will be programmed to have each servo rotate 135 degrees before returning to its original state.

Here are some rudimentary outlines of classes and functions our arduino control system will probably include:
Classes:
Panel
Name/number - which panel this object refers to
Servos - list of servos/outputs that corresponding panel servos connect to
Direction - list of same size of list called “Servos” with value 1 or -1 to indicate which direction that servo should rotate

Functions:
Rotate
Inputs
Servos - list of servos/outputs to send signals to
Direction - which direction the servos are oriented
Description
Rotate each servo 135 degrees * direction and then rotate again by 135 degrees * -direction

**Mechanical Folder**
The mechanical folder will consist of a power supply and servos. Each folding panel will have 1-2 servos at the folding point. The power to these servos will all be controlled by the arduino system. Additionally each panel will be 3-d printed in a checkered or grilled like fashion. This will reduce the weight, thus reducing the torque needed to fold each panel.

**Criterion for Success**
Success for this project will be the completion of folding four different types of clothes and the creation of a small pile of roughly three to five clothing items. Specifically, the mode selector will send the proper signal for the user selected mode to the Arduino. The Arduino will take the input signal and then output the proper signals in the correct order based on the input signal. Finally, the mechanical motors and arms properly fold the clothes and create a neat pile next to the device.

Smart Frisbee

Ryan Moser, Blake Yerkes, James Younce

Smart Frisbee

Featured Project

The idea of this project would be to improve upon the 395 project ‘Smart Frisbee’ done by a group that included James Younce. The improvements would be to create a wristband with low power / short range RF capabilities that would be able to transmit a user ID to the frisbee, allowing the frisbee to know what player is holding it. Furthermore, the PCB from the 395 course would be used as a point of reference, but significantly redesigned in order to introduce the transceiver, a high accuracy GPS module, and any other parts that could be modified to decrease power consumption. The frisbee’s current sensors are a GPS module, and an MPU 6050, which houses an accelerometer and gyroscope.

The software of the system on the frisbee would be redesigned and optimized to record various statistics as well as improve gameplay tracking features for teams and individual players. These statistics could be player specific events such as the number of throws, number of catches, longest throw, fastest throw, most goals, etc.

The new hardware would improve the frisbee’s ability to properly moderate gameplay and improve “housekeeping”, such as ensuring that an interception by the other team in the end zone would not be counted as a score. Further improvements would be seen on the software side, as the frisbee in it’s current iteration will score as long as the frisbee was thrown over the endzone, and the only way to eliminate false goals is to press a button within a 10 second window after the goal.