Robots have played Jenga since at least 2008 (Kröger et al., “A manipulator plays Jenga”), but those systems relied on proprietary software, custom communication links and up to four control computers. I wanted to see how much easier it would be with modern compute and ROS. Also, playing Jenga alone is boring.
I designed and built a custom end-effector in PTC Creo and Autodesk EAGLE. It has a micro load cell that senses loose blocks and pushes one out, a micro LiDAR that locates the block, and a rack-and-pinion gripper that extracts the block and places it on top.
The software is about 3,000 lines of C++ on ROS, plus Python, MATLAB and Arduino. It covers camera calibration, end-effector control on an Arduino UNO, a Jenga-playing AI, and arm trajectory control.
The robot plays a block in about a minute and has reached 20 levels before the tower fell.