Cigarette Game

Maybe it's better to play a game!

For the Mechatronics 1 course of Bruface's Master programme in Electro-Mechanical Engineering (Mechatronics - Mechanical Constructions), we were asked to develop a robot that merged the knowledge learned during the course.
In early development phase, our team focused on one goal: make people throw less cigarettes on the ground by coming up with an interesting game aimed at those who smoke, and this way reducing littering. By coming up with a quick but interesting game that uses the cigarette butts as playing credits, it is provided an extra reason for smokers to throw the butts into the right container instead of the ground.
From all the initial ideas, one distanced itself from the others and the project concept was defined. The goal of the game was now to complete a simple challenge: sinking a ping pong ball into a basket by throwing it with a catapult controlled by the user.
When a cigarette is inserted, the game activates and the player is allowed to throw the ball once in an attempt to score. The challenging factor here is timing, since the player must hit the button at the right interval of time. There is also an LCD screen that gives some feedback to the player.