For our “Robot Magician”, we made a robot that can perform card tricks

Mechanically, our robot is relatively simple, it uses 2 motors and a ball bearing to move and turn. We built a card dealer out of the EV3 motor and various pieces which, in ideal conditions, allow us to deal out cards one at a time.

Our first trick is a simple trick, where we ask someone to pick a card, flip over the deck, and then ask the person to place the card back in the deck. Their card is then the only one that is flipped over, and we can place the entire deck into the card dealer which spews out the cards.

Our second trick is essentially card counting. We have the robot deal out 3 piles face up, with 7 cards each, one card at a time. The person mentally chooses a card, and then presses a button on the robot to indicate which pile the card is in. The cards are collected and put into the robot, and this process is repeated 2 more times. After the last one, the robot “knows” which card you picked. After that,  the robot deals the cards into 3 piles,this time with the cards face down, and asks the spectator to randomly choose a pile. If the card is in the chosen pile, the pile is kept, and the others discarded. If it isn’t the chosen pile is discarded, and the robot asks for the spectator to pick another one while following the same logic as the first pick. Once one pile is left, those cards are collected, and put back into the robot. This process is repeated until only the person’s chosen card is left.