This Robot Can Play Simon Better Than Most of Us
Ido Roseman's Simon setup uses four servo-controlled arms to hit the colored buttons.
Simon was introduced in 1978, and while it's a fun and popular game, Ido Roseman isn’t particularly good at memory games. So he instead decided to build a robot to play it for him.
The resulting robot looks like a sort of wooden mechanical monster, coming up from beneath the Simon board with four tentacles. Rather than attacking it, however, its four servo-actuated linkage arms are pulled down onto the appropriate button to replicate the generated lights-and-sounds sequence.
To get the mechanical shape correct, Roseman first drew the structure by hand, and cut it out of cardboard. He then created DXF files for it using Fusion 360. The permanent structure was cut out of 6mm plywood, with wires that were cut and bent to length in order to pull the arms down on the buttons.
The system is controlled via an Arduino, along with a prototyping shield salvaged from a previous project. LDRs are glued on the robot to sense the lighting pattern as “eyes" for light pattern recording. It’s a fairly simple setup from an electronics standpoint, though as seen in the project video in the write-up, it appears to do a great job playing the game. Build files are available there as well, if you want to examine it further!