ILLUMICUBE
Undergraduate team project to promote physical activity and problem solving skills in children under the age of 10.
CHALLENGE:
Work with a team of engineering students to find a way to promote physical activity in children under the age of 10. Then design, build, and test it in just 12 weeks.
ACTION:
Kids like objects that are interactive, so a responsive 3D light puzzle seemed like a good start. Then we made it big. So big that they'd have to work up a sweat to solve it
OUTCOME:
First and foremost, kids loved it. Feedback from parents was positive too, and so was feedback from pretty much everyone else. The cherry on top? We were awarded best in class.
The Design Process
The prompt was simple: come up with a way to promote physical activity in children under the age of 10. Ideally, the solution would be a physical object that could be designed and built in the course of 12 weeks. I’d have help, of course, in the form of four teammates. Myself and two others were mechanical engineering students, one was an architectural engineer, and one was a computer science major.
We had all sorts of wild ideas, but the most promising was a really big light puzzle. It checked all the boxes of the original prompt and had the added benefit of promoting problem solving skills too. It was going to be tough to build in the time we had, something that was repeatedly pointed out to us, but we were up for the challenge.
Fabrication and Testing
This idea that we eventually named the ‘ILLUMICUBE’ started out as just a bunch of sketches and some notes on a white board. We spent weeks going over the concept and figuring out details. To make our dream a reality, we all had to learn CAD software, basic mechatronics skills, and all sorts of fabrication techniques.
The software engineering major on the team naturally did the lions share of the coding, while the rest of us split up the physical design and construction of the cube. I worked extensively on the design of the interlocking structure of wooden beams that would make up the skeleton of the cube, generating wiring layouts, selecting materials and finishes, and creating our poster, while my other teammates created CAD models, 3D printed parts, laser cut the face panels, and troubleshot the electronics. The entire team worked on the fabrication of the cube, and we all gained valuable experience with end mills, band saws, routers, power sanders, and soldering.
The Finished Product
Everything was coming together and we were feeling good two days before the big reveal of our project, known simply as ‘expo’. Then our lights stopped working. We had forgotten a capacitor in our wiring and overloaded a handful of lights when we plugged our battery in for the first time, causing the whole array of lights to not illuminate. We diagnosed the problem the day before expo and scrambled to get not only a capacitor, but also new lights to replace the ones we had fried. We worked until nearly 4am to get everything fixed and put together, but we managed to get it all done and have a 100% functional project to show off in time for expo.
Speaking of expo, it was a huge success. Everyone that came to check out our project loved it. The judges were impressed with the complexity of our design and that we were able to pull it off in such a short time, professors came and asked us if they could use it as an example in their classes, and even other teams would take breaks from talking about their own projects to come over and play with ours. Expo is also a family event, so we had lots of little kids check out our project too, and they all loved it. It was intuitive for them to use, heavy enough that they had to work to flip it over, strong enough that they could climb all over it, and with the exception of creating some sibling rivalry, so much fun that they didn’t want to leave it to go explore the rest of expo. In the end, we were awarded best in our class and top five overall for all of expo.
Project Photo Gallery
Each of the six faces would eventually look like this.
Beginning to assemble the frame.
The finished project looked particularly cool in the dark.
Each of the six faces would eventually look like this.