Robot Sanitizer

Close up of the robot sanitizer with its sensors in the front, two wheels, and Arduino mounted on the chassis.

Clip of the robot sanitizer dodging a corner of a table.

As a part of our first-year engineering class, we had to create a device that would solve a COVID-related problem. My team of initially four people decided to pursue a Roomba-like robot that would drive around a desk and clean surfaces. Unfortunately, two of my teammates ghosted the project, while the remaining teammate was operating remotely in California due to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So, let it be known that although I built, wired, programmed, and created the robot, the project idea to clean tables using an autonomous robot belongs to Samantha Lee.

The bot uses components from the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit and two additional IR sensors. The IR sensors are on the left and right of the bot right above its wheels. These sensors detect when there is an edge. An additional ultrasonic sensor on the front acted as redundancy in case the IR sensors failed to detect an edge. Onboard is a SparkFun Redboard running custom Arduino code. My goal was to code the bot to drive around in random directions, yet avoid falling off the table. So for every edge it detected, the bot would turn at some angle, drive straight, and correct again if needed. The bot would do this until the entire table was “clean.”

To simulate the idea of the table being cleaned, I wired a purple LED at the bottom, which was my pretend UV light. Overall, I was able to get the bot to drive around any square table with little-to-no failure. On average it would fail once every 5-10 minutes of runtime. For a first-semester engineering project, I was happy with the outcome.