RoboDry

Dry clothes, less workload — RoboDry does it all.

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Inspiration

Gana and I (Jun Han) decided to join this hackathon (FounderForge) as we wanted to make a positive impact on our community in Singapore. Thereafter, we brainstormed about challenges that we faced daily. From there, we thought that building a household robot to aid repetitive tasks could be a good help for our family as our adults are mostly working, leaving behind children and elderly at home to take care of themselves. Household robots are also one of the projects allowed from FounderForge. As Gana and I, together with our family, live in a high-rise building in Singapore, under the Housing and Development Board flat, we get to wake up to the greeneries, hustle and bustle of the city, children skipping to school and elderly people going for a walk in the park every day. However, one of the problems that we realised is that there were pieces of undergarments and clothes scattered all over the floor near the void deck. We soon realised that the clothes fell from the bamboo poles from the residents who lives at a higher block. We went on to do deep research about the frequency of laundry scatter from residents who live in high-rise buildings and whether it could pose a serious risk of landing on someone below or polluting the environment. It turned out that there were various news articles solely in Singapore reporting that drying laundry can pose pain to our body where one source conducted a biomechanical study and found out that it poses a medium risk to users, significantly higher than the safety value of 2. However, the only recommendations and control strategies implemented is administrative control such as reorganising household space such that users do not over-stretch or adopting work-rest strategy to avoid muscle fatigue. In the hierarchy of controls, it is one of the least effective efforts to aid these common issues. To get more evidence, we decided to ask our household members regarding this laundry drying issue. One problem was consistent (i.e Muscle fatigue) while others said that their difficulty was to reach out of the window ledge to retrieve pillows or clothes where it may drop down sometimes. This can pose an alarming risk as one wrong move could result in devastating consequences for the user or people below. At last, family members also mentioned that the unpredictable weather poses a huge burden as they have to constantly make sure that their clothes are kept in dark clouds form. Sometimes, they even need to move clothes in and out of the window repeatedly due to the harsh weather conditions. Therefore, we have concluded that hanging laundry outdoors is a common but physically demanding task. It involves repetitive movement, heavy lifting, and reaching over edges, which can lead to strain, injury, or even falls—especially for the elderly, people with disabilities, and children. At the same time, unpredictable weather can also cause inconvenience to people. This combination of safety risks and inconvenience highlights a growing need for a safer, smarter, and more accessible solution. It can also be consistent with why there are clothes and undergarments scattered over the floor. Worse of all, some could even drop laundry bamboo poles or fall off the window ledge which will result in serious safety repercussions.

What it does

Thereafter, Gana and I decided to map out how we are going to design a home robotic laundry rack drying system to aid household users by lessening workload, improving safety risks and increasing overall experience.

First of all, as a general knowledge, we have delegated workflow where Jun Han will focus on building the mechanical system of the robot including its appearance, twisting and turning of the robot and its function. While Gana will focus on constructing the electronic system of the robot including its sensor integration, Arduino programming, and overall system control.

Ultimately, this robot will mainly consist of mechanical and electrical systems.

As the goal of this hackathon is to build a robot, we will also implement concepts regarding moisture sensors and rule-based logic (i.e Arduino with c++ coding) to ensure that it does not require human intervention to hang the clothes outside, except in a press of a button.

The concept of the rule-based logic goes like this. There are 3 positions that the robot arm will go into. 'Clothes hanging' position, 'Clothes outdoor drying' position and 'Clothes indoor drying' position. Upon sensing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, the robot will decide which position it will go into based on the Arduino code. Firstly, the user must press an on/off button to start the robot and it will automatically go into the ‘Clothes hanging position’. In this position, the robot will stay locked in this place no matter whether it senses water so that users can hang their clothes easily without any trouble. After hanging, the user will press the on/off button again where ‘Clothes indoor drying position’ is utilised. It is the same position as the previous one but it can turn 90 degree outwards of the window ledge to ‘Clothes outdoor drying' position freely to get the sunlight needed whenever it detects no moisture from the environment. For users to take out the clothes, the user will have to press the button again for the robot arm to turn back 90 degrees into 'Clothes hanging' position inside of the house where it is sheltered. After taking out the clothes, the user will press the button again to stop the operation completely.

In conclusion, this is how the robot works and what it does. Efficient, convenient and satisfying. That is what RoboDry can do.

How we built it

For Jun Han At first, I was playing around with various 3D software applications such as Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor. But later, I found that Autodesk Fusion (Formerly known as Fusion360) suits our project as it is makers’ friendly and it has the functions to design and simulate our product. I used sourcecad.com to help me learn the fundamentals of Fusion quickly, where I get to use the essential tools for designing. On top of that, I utilise Youtube to teach me how to insert standard off-the-shelves components (For e.g. McMaster-Carr) instead of making it myself, which significantly reduces cost. After learning the fundamentals, I go on to sketch the design to get a rough idea of how I want my product to look and how it will function with the electronic system that Gana is making. I did various drafts of the design and went on to conclude the final draft of the drawing. Next, I have to measure the size of the component by comparing it to the area of my house’s window ledge. According to my research, I have found out that the height of the house is 2 to 2.5m and the length of the window ledge is roughly 2m. From there, I can roughly gauge the maximum size of the robot. Then, I began testing in Fusion by using a scaled-down version, where 100mm in Fusion equates to 1000mm in real life. There were various trials and errors due to joints and planning faults. Eventually, I managed to come up with an assembled product with standardised screws and bolts in place.

For Gana This system was built using an Arduino and programmed using C++ in the Tinkercad environment. At the beginning, I explored how different electronic components such as push buttons, LEDs, and a moisture sensor work and how they can be connected to the Arduino. Tinkercad helped me experiment with the circuit safely and understand how inputs and outputs behave before finalising the design. As I wrote the code, I learned how to use conditional statements, variables, and button toggling to control the system’s operation. Through testing and making small changes, I gradually improved the logic and behaviour of the system. This process helped me better understand how hardware and software work together in an automated system.

Challenges we ran into

For Jun Han One of the challenges I faced was to fixate on planning out the appearance of the product rather than focusing on the gearing system such that it can twist and turn easily. Despite the long-hours of planning and drawing, it ended up not working in Fusion as the gearing system cannot work with it. Thus, I have to scrap everything and work on the gearing system before I focus on the appearance of the robot. On top of that, I had trouble assembling the joints of the robot arms together and had to rely on Youtube research to find out how I can solve the warning signs shown by Fusion. Lastly, various 3D design software requires subscription and payments which I could not afford but only able to do free student trials for 30 days.

For Gana One of the challenges I faced was integrating our two switches using push buttons. A push button only outputs a digital HIGH (1) signal momentarily when it is pressed, whereas our system required the signal to remain active continuously after a single press. Since we were not very confident in our coding skills, we wanted to avoid replacing the push buttons with slide switches. Instead, we were determined to modify and manipulate the code so that the push buttons would behave like toggle switches, maintaining their state until they were pressed again.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For Jun Han I am proud that my partner and I have come together despite the busy schedule at work that we have. We managed to produced an idea that I initially doubted our progression. It shows that with great willingness, anything is possible. I am also proud that I did self-learning on Fusion including the sketching of drafts, trials and errors that go with it, and the software functions (Assembly with joints, design features like extrude, revolve, shell, hole, mirror, circular and rectangular pattern, and using standardise screws and motor from McMaster-Carr). I am also proud of Gana for having the patience to clarify important details such as the work delegation and rules of the hackathon with me. Our teamwork really came together, and with the right guidance from mentors and resources, we will definitely strive to do better.

For Gana We are proud of ourselves for coming up with the entire project idea and successfully bringing it to life as a team. Throughout the process, we learned many new concepts that we were not familiar with at the start, especially in electronics, programming, and system integration. Despite facing multiple challenges along the way, we worked through them by experimenting, discussing solutions, and improving our design step by step. This project not only helped us build technical skills but also strengthened our teamwork and problem-solving abilities, which makes this accomplishment even more meaningful to us.

What we learned

For Jun Han I have learnt about the fundamentals of designing and simulating the mechanical system of a robot such as getting inspiration from other robot designs, mapping out the most efficient mechanical system and testing out the both design and mechanical system in Fusion software. Although I only had the resources to simulate our product, I believe that this has given me the experience to be better for the next project. I have also learnt how to communicate with my partner and clarify every doubt with one another.

For Gana Through this project, I learned how electronic components such as buttons, LEDs, and moisture sensors work together with an Arduino to form a complete system. I also learned how to design and test circuits using Tinkercad before implementing them physically. While programming in C++, I gained a better understanding of using variables, conditional statements, and button toggling to control different system states. I faced challenges in getting the buttons and sensor logic to work correctly, but by testing and debugging the code step by step, I was able to improve the system’s reliability. Overall, this project helped me understand how hardware and software integrate to create an automated robotic system.

What's next for RoboDry

There are a lot of room for improvement for RoboDry, such as implementing a more efficient gearing system where it can keep itself into a container to allow more space for user to walk, incorporating counterweights to balance the load from hanging clothes, and replacing the hangers with Heated clothes drying racks in places where snows. On top of that, we can also add in temperature and humidity sensor for a more accurate sensing of the weather conditions. We can also inquire past historic data to help us find a pattern of the relationship between temperature/humidity to the likeliness of it raining, shining, snowing and many more. Lastly, we can fabricate the assembly into real life with careful consideration of cost by 3D printing it out first and getting the right resources from sponsors.

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