Robots make our Lives Easier

Sometimes.

We built a beautiful robot that made us waffles (us in this situation doesn’t mean Andrew and I, it means three other BYU students and myself). It is pretty cool actually, run with pneumatic cylinders all powered and controlled by a basic stamp, called a board of education (for those of you that are familiar with electronics, they are similar to arduinos).  The timing is mostly driven by sensors: the light sensor turns on the waffle maker, the heat sensor on the waffle maker tells the program to move the waffle maker forward, which then squirts the batter onto the waffle iron (using a dollar store water-gun) and then in moves back into the closed cooking position.  After cooking for 3-4 minutes, the waffle comes out and another cylinder is trigger to hit a button on a speaker, which then says, “Your waffle is finished.”