Escape Room Robot Prototype

If you’re unfamiliar with escape rooms, they are establishments where you and a few friends pay to be put into a prison-like enclosure. You then have to figure out how to get to freedom via a series of riddles and various tricks.

Whether this sounds like fun or something that friend will drag you to, the mechanisms behind this type of simulation can be quite clever. As part of a mechatronics course at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, a team was given the assignment of developing a robot for use in these situations that “brings something new” to the table.

What they came up with was a circular robot with 3D-printed springs arranged around its circumference, puprortedly to aid in the requirement that it be robust to survive multiple gaming sessions in a row. Control is via an Arduino Uno and motor shield, while motion and steering are handled by a pair of motors in a tank-like arrangement.

The code for the program is meant to allow users (“prisoners”) to command the robot using a remote control unit only after a riddle is solved, and implements a timer so that if things are not solved within a set amount of time, it can switch to automated control. While the team wasn’t able to entirely finalize the project by their deadline, a prototype escape robot can be seen in the video below, perhaps giving you a few ideas for your next build!