UPDATE: featured on GIZMODO,ENGADGET and MAKE!

Finally, my finalized prototype of SOBEaR, the responsible robot bartender.

SOBEaR is a robot friend for anyone who does not know their own limits, or has problems controlling themselves.
When you press the “breathe + pour” button on his right foot, the status light goes solid, and the user breathes into SOBEaR’s face. You can see the alcohol sensor above the bowtie, under his chin. Your current blood alcohol content (BAC) is then shown a scale from 1 – 6 with green, yellow, and red LEDs in SOBEaR’s chest. Depending on how drunk you are (or aren’t) SOBEaR will pour you a drink appropriate for your current state. In the video below, SOBEaR is pouring cranberry vodkas for my user tester. Two servos hold the alcohol and the mixer, and with the SoftwareServo library for arduino, programming this aspect was simple.

For many obvious reasons, I used a MapDuino which is an ATmega168 chip soldered into a custom PCB circuit (started with perfboard from radiocrack) for the brains of this robot. The alcohol sensor was super easy to implement, got it from sparkfun via my computation studio.

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This battery powered electronic musical instrument is a descendant of the theremin and can be played without contact from the musician. This small instrument contains two infared (IR) sensors that measure proximity. One sensor controls the note, while the other controls the octave that is played through the speaker in the front. The tone is reflected by one of seven colors that illuminates the center area and highlights a small indicator located on the top panel. Check out the video.

Theremin Style Instrument from Nick Hardeman on Vimeo.

I have posted the source code, some videos and pics as well, check out the original post.