Robot Architecture “Lyly Autonomous Robot and My Previous Attempts at Robot Construction” June 28, 2007 Scott Settembre University at Buffalo, SNePS Research Group

My First Robot Computer controlled Turtle robot Constructed out of wood, hobby parts, and solid state components Wired by cartridge port to Radio Shack Color Computer During first presentation, MOSFETS got fried Learned: Hardware is expensive

My First Collaboration Robot Micro Mouse - maze competition Utilized 6809E processor Hardware custom designed by other students I designed a virtual environment to simulate and test hardware drivers and maze search and solve code because of continual hardware issues Learned: Hardware design and test is a major time sink

My First Robot Hack Decided to hack RC cars Cheaper and most of the hardware design is already been done Control by computer through serial port to remote controller No feedback between RC car and computer Learned: RC vehicles move faster than remote computer can turn them away from a door frame…

My First Autonomous Robot – July 4, 1997 Ordered a Basic STAMP kit robot and decided to assemble it during the Mars Pathfinder landing in honor of the Sojourner Rover Watched live NASA feeds in FOX News cold room while assembling Luckily it took NASA over a day to get it off the landing pad, since it took that long to build a simple kit Programmed using Stamp Basic and program is downloaded to robot through parallel port Learned: Small robots are easy to program, slow to test, not very powerful at all

My First Robot Architecture Realizations… LARGE commitment of time to –Build… there is always another screw to get, resistor to buy, wire to run –Test… check schematics, remove and reinstall boards and reconnect wires, and always guessing is involved –Debug… programs need to download to robot, then get robot to state you want to test, then test. Debug cycle way too long…

My First “Virtual” Autonomous Robot Decided the best way to design robots was to simulate them in a virtual environment I used DirectX to model a world to get the sensor data I needed to feed a robot I selected a few visual features and applied an ANN to train object avoidance behavior Worked! Internal monologue: “Yay! Now I have a good way to program a robot!” And so…

“LyLy” - ROV and Autonomous Robot Designed a robot in a CAD Built it out of wood, RoboteQ motor controller, wheelchair motors, golf cart batteries, and laptop. Two modes: –ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) mode Uses WiFi, transmits visual and audio to the control computer Control computer can transmit back to robot With laptop on top, and open, we have a remote person! –Autonomous mode Does not require WiFi, though with WiFi it has access to the LyLy server which can do more extensive decision making and data storage

“LyLy” - Autonomous Mode Internal laptop collects visual and audio data –Processes images, makes instinctive turn and stop decisions –Processes audio, for voice recognition –Implements reflex/instincts, all hard-coded –Has backup “personality” and logic as a failsafe –Forwards processed information to external “brain” External processing –Relieves processing needing to be done on robot laptop –Quicker and more stable connection –Cheaper cost, faster execution