A robot is a machine that does something physical,
automatically in response to its environment.
What are NOT robots?

• A monkey is not a robot because it is not a machine.
• A computer is not a robot because it just sits and processes data.
• It does not do anything physical.
• The “robot” arm on the space shuttle is not a robot because it is totally under human control and does not do anything automatically.
• An alarm clock is not a robot because it does not sense or respond to its environment. It keeps track of time, but it does so internally.

What IS a robot?

• My home washing machine is a robot.
• It is a machine.
• It physically moves the clothes around to wash them.
• It performs a number of different activities in order to wash the clothes such as filling up with water, adding soap, agitating the clothes, removing the water, refilling with clean water, adding fabric softener, rinsing the clothes, removing the water, buzzing to let me know that it is done and then turning itself off. The most important thing is that while I may pre-program this robot to tell it how I want things done (i.e., hot water, slow spin, no bleach), it performs all these function completely without my assistance or intervention.

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During the last several years there has been a general movement towards building mobile robots that walk instead of roll; of substituting legs for wheels; of imitating insects instead of Volkswagens. My thesis here is that wheels are a much better choice for both hobbyists and professional roboticists.

The raison d’etre for legged robots seems to be that they promise to provide better mobility over a greater variety of terrain. This hope is seemingly confirmed by the fact that there are no wheeled animals. Indeed, two robot researchers that I hold in the highest esteem, Professor Rodney Brooks, the director of the MIT mobile robot lab (previously nicknamed the “insect lab”), and Mark Tilden, the creator of the Robot Olympics, BEAM Robotics and nervous nets, both opt for legged creations. In fact, Tilden eloquently makes the case for legged devices in the following quote:

“… wheeled devices have very limited utility in many environments. More than half of earth’s landmass is impassable by wheeled vehicles of today’s conventional size, let alone miniature or toy sized devices. Wheels are simply unsuitable in many environments, for example in rough or soft terrain. Moreover, any wheeled device is restricted to largely horizontal travel, since traction relies entirely on the force of gravity.

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I WHINED for YEARS about how hard it was to write robot software. “I don’t WANT to learn C! I don’t WANT to write in assembly language! I want to have FUN writing software!”

So I fixed the problem myself. I hunkered down with a case of cola and a good book, “The Art of C,” by Herbert Schildt. His book, published years ago by McGraw-Hill, contains 28 finished C programs that actually do something, complete with source listings and source code on a floppy disc. It’s still well worth reading, even if some of the material is dated; the programs were intended to run under DOS.

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Wanna fun robot simulator? I recommend you download a robot simulator from Luiz Felipe Rudge Encarnacao. It includes an untethered mobile gripper with 5 degrees of movement in a 3-D room of objects and a toy airplane flying around in the same room. This is a Windows program that runs well on a Pentium and doesn’t lose its usefulness on a double speed 486.

The graphics are simple but versatile. The full motion illustrated robot and airplace are wire-frame b&w line art. The simulator instructions are context-available in a box below the action, and are simple to follow. The camera views available are really a must-see, since they give you 17 different angles to aim your pickup and delivery of the objects. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to put your robot on the Web I recommend you take a look at some interactive devices on the Internet. A good first stop is the University of Ulm’s model railroad. When you visit their Web site, you are entered into a queue of people who may issue a command to one of two Schnell Zugs and / or leave a message to the other operators.

Second, issue your command (by clicking on a train and a destination) and sit back to wait. Eventually, your turn will come, your command will move the train, and your message will be seen by all those in the queue. Be advised that this site easily gets thousands of hits each day, and a new user logs in every minute or so.

I found that I had to manually click REFRESH / RELOAD on my browser to see the train move. The designers have thoughtfully included a clock sitting next to the diarama.

Cool. It’s not Disneyland, but the site is worth a look, especially for those who want to set up their own interactive Internet site.

When building ‘bots, you often have to lay out a printed circuit board (PCB). But before you plunk down lots of hard-earned cash on a big-bucks PCB layout package, take Easytrax for a test drive. It’s got plenty of features, works great, and it’s free!

Protel Technology used to sell Easytrax as a DOS-based PCB layout tool. After discontinuing the product, Protel simply gave it away by making the EASYTRAX.ZIP file freely available. I picked up a copy from http://www.coast.net/SimTel/.

The installation is straightfoward: I started by creating a directory named c:\easytrax, then copied the ZIP file into it and unzipped the file. Then I executed the INSTALL.EXE file to uncompress and install the program suite. Read the rest of this entry »

Before Generation X makes its mark on Earth, it will make its presence felt on the Moon. Entrepreneurs at LunaCorp (Arlington, VA), NASA-funded scientists, and researchers at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh) are working toward a 1999 return to Tranquillity Base. The mission will require landing two rovers packed with sensors at the Apollo 11 landing site where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the moon. Significantly, the rovers will be operated only some of the time by scientists; the most important operators will be customers, you and me, at the Lunar Expedition Pavilion of a major entertainment theme park. 

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Robert Ringrose of MIT demo’ed a very cool design at AAAI97. His Hopper robot leg stands on its own, and, when activated, hops straight up and down, maintaining its balance. It corrects its balance if you shove it to one side. It can be adjusted to hop forward, backward left, right, etc., simply by changing its center of gravity. The hopper will move in the direction of its mass.

This robot needs no brain. It is stabilized by physics. Hopping is a very stable motion. The rotary motion of the motor is turned into a sinusoidal motion which is in series with the spring.

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