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The Robots

This section presents some of the educational robost that are designed to put fun and effectiveness into robot education. The robots teach students about real-time programming, parallel processing, information technology (eg vision processing), control of mechanical systems (including dynamics and real life problems such as non-linearities, backlash and hysteresis), electronics and problem solving.

Most of the robots are made small and battery powered so they can fit on the bench top. This means they can be made at relatively low cost and produced in quantity so students can be grouped into twos or threes with a pc (for programming the robot) and a robot for each group. Today's electronics is just great and getting faster, smaller, less power hungry and cheaper all the time. As a consequence one can make robots nowadays that are bench top size but still are full of interesting and intricate high tech sensors, actuators, embedded processors and mechanical systems. The students are thus able to get first hand engineering experience and exposure to real machines without costing a lot of money.

The latest robot research is into a hovering and flying, protracting and retracting flapping wing ornithopter robot. As far as I know hovering has not been done before with an ornithopter robot that flies like a bird or a bat with wings that can protract and retract so this research is presenting fascinating and difficult challenges and none more so than in the area of mechanical engineering which is the Cinderella of engineering sciences. (It's much easier to get quick results with electronic and software engineering but not so with mechanical engineering). The bat will have variable wing geometry without any conventional flaps, slots, slats, ailerons, elevator or rudder. The wings will warp and flap similar to a bat. Below are the list of the educational robots that I have designed and built:

Beetle Robot

This beetle robot has 6 legs with 2 servos controlling each leg. The robot can move forwards, backward and turn to the right and left at many different speeds. The robot can be controlled using a radio remote controller or in autonomous mode, it moves under its own intelligence by detecting obstacles with a pair of 'whiskers'.

Centipede Robot

This robot is made up of 10 of the above-described beetle robots connected by 9 link systems. The 1st segment acts as the master while the other 9 segments are the slaves. The master sends information of its direction to the each of the following slaves such that this information travels down the spine of the centipede at a speed equal to the speed of the body.

Cuttlefish Robot

This robot was designed to emulate the fin motion of a cuttlefish. The 'fins' are connected to 12 servos on each side. The servos move in a sinusoidal motion to create a propulsive force. The robot sits on the surface of the water with the fins below the waterline.

Underwater Eel Robot

This robot is composed of 4 body sections. It is built from waterproofed units which are:-
(i) waterproof battery box
(ii) waterproof servo
(ii) waterproof computer box (containing one Basic Stamp2)
(ii) waterproof radio receiver box

Underwater Walking Robot

This robot walked under water via radio control. Yes radio, even at 40MHz, will pass through at least 10 feet of water with a few watts. Each leg is controlled by its own Basic Stamp2 and a seventh BS2 synchronises them.

Underwater "Helicopter" Robot

This is a new one and will be challenging to control. It's sitting on a stand here. It has 4 servos which drive a pair of fins. Each fin can vary its angle of attack and can reciprocatingly sweep through an angle up to +/- 90 degrees. By suitable control of the 4 servos it should be possible to produce 5 degrees of freedom (from 4 servos!).

Twin Beetle Robot

Following the problems of the centipede robot ,a pair of beetle robots was connected together with a low force, 6 dof, relative displacement and relative angle link system. A capstan and wire system was used to obtain then relative displacement between the two beetles.

Spider Robot

One of the more developed of the walking robots is this 8 legged spider robot. (Remember spider=8legs, beetle=insect=6 legs). Each leg is actuated by 3 servos (Futaba S3003 and S9450)which makes 24 servos total. Because the robot has 3dof legs then it is capable of being omni-directional .

Tricycle

BabyBeetle Robot

This is a further improvement of the beetle robot and is smaller in size (golfball used as a reference) as well as more versatile, being omni-directional. Each leg has 3 dof, hence, the baby beetle consists of 18 dof. In the movie section, a few of the clips shows its dexterity on the ground.

Axi-Symmetric Omni-Bot

"Omni-directional" means that the robot can walk in all directions including rotating whilst translating like in a Viennese waltz. Furthermore, the body possesses 6 degrees of freedom i.e. the body can rotate and translate (albeit limited) about and along its fore-and-aft axis, its athwartships axis and its vertical axis. This means that the body of the robot can be a stabilised platform.