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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.

Amphibious Spherical Explorer

Kaiwen Chen, Junhao Su, Zhong Tan

Amphibious Spherical Explorer

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The amphibious spherical explorer (ASE) is a spherical robot for home monitoring, outdoor adventure or hazardous environment surveillance. Due to the unique shape of the robot, ASE can travel across land, dessert, swamp or even water by itself, or be casted by other devices (e.g. slingshot) to the mission area. ASE has a motion-sensing system based on Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and rotary magnetic encoder, which allows the internal controller to adjust its speed and attitude properly. The well-designed control system makes the robot free of visible wobbliness when it is taking actions like acceleration, deceleration, turning and rest. ASE is also a platform for research on control system design. The parameters of the internal controller can be assigned by an external control panel in computer based on MATLAB Graphic User Interface (GUI) which communicates with the robot via a WiFi network generated by the robot. The response of the robot can be recorded and sent back to the control panel for further analysis. This project is completely open-sourced. People who are interested in the robot can continue this project for more interesting features, such as adding camera for real-time surveillance, or controller design based on machine learning.

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