Feature: Build your own robot

Thanks to cheap technology, robotics is no longer the preserve of men in white coats

I robot. You, robot. We should all robot. Why? Well, we could tell you that it is educational, and we will tell you it is an idea that has finally reached its time, but the main reason is simply that it’s fun, and now, more than ever before, is the time to become a robot hobbyist.

Robots have fascinated us since Fritz Lang’s Maria first danced for us in 1927 in the film Metropolis. Then they were an impossible dream – it wasn’t just the technology that was missing, think about the materials. That was an era when not only engine blocks but also pistons were still being made from cast iron.

Constructing even a basic humanoid robot has required advances in many different areas – digital processing, memory, gyroscopic stabilisers, tiny motors, metallurgy, plastics, batteries, carbon fibre – the list is almost endless.

The good news is that we are finally on the cusp of the robot age and, as with every major technological advance, from the aircraft to the PC, that cusp period is a wonderful time for hobbyists.

Of course, those advances can be used to build a whole range of robots from cute baby dinosaurs with personalities, through robots that can drive 130 miles through the Nevada desert, to the full-on android.

The fastest way to get started building your own is with a kit. Many of the robots you can build are programmable, and for this you can typically use a PC, some software and a USB port.

Obviously you need programming skills but, some argue, robotics is the best way of learning programming.

Where do you start?
Even easier than a kit, you can simply walk out and buy yourself a robot. There is the Robosapien, for example, that sells for about £50.

It’s programmable with up to 84 program steps and no computer is required; all you need is the remote control.

Robosapien V2 is distinctly different. For a start, at over 60cm tall it is almost twice the size of the previous incarnation.

It also offers autonomous behaviour and the ability to interact with, and control, other Robonetics products such as Roboraptor. The bad news is that the price has also increased in stature – prices range from £160 to £200.

If you want something a little fiercer, there’s the Roboraptor. It isn’t programmable in the same way, although it has 40-odd pre-programmed functions and can be driven using the hand controller or allowed to roam free. For about £70 you can start your own dinosaur dynasty.

A bit too fierce? Then what about Pleo? He’s a one-week old Camarasaurus from the Jurassic period. According to the website, Pleo is ‘The world’s first life form’, which is a bit of a blow for us humans, but I suppose we’ll have to learn to live with it.

Further information includes the fact that: ‘Pleo will let you know how he feels at any moment. That’s because he is capable of actual emotions including joy, aggression, sorrow, and fear. He can also yawn, sigh, sniff, sniffle, snore, cough, hiccup and sneeze.’ To be frank, this may not be a great selling point. We’ve all see Jurassic Park; we know what happens when a dinosaur sneezes.

However, this guy does look very cute and will be available in the autumn for about $200 (£115 approx). He isn’t programmable but will have an ‘upgradeable life form OS and personality system’. That could be useful for some humans we know.

Looking for something a bit more complex and expensive? Then consider the Robonova-1. He costs about £590, is programmable and can ‘walk, run, punch, kick and do many acrobatic moves’. He’s from Hitec Robotics, which produces a wide range of optional components for the Robonova.

The Japanese also produce some excellent humanoid robot kits such as the £770 Kondo KHR-1, available from Robosavvy.

Robot kits
Of course, adventurous PCW readers may well prefer something they can build and really program.

No-one is suggesting your first robot will be as humanoid as Gort from The day the earth stood still (but it may be worth memorising the phrase ‘Klaatu barada nikto’ just in case); much simpler, smaller robots can be huge fun. Let’s start with the obvious one, Mindstorms from Lego.

Lego announced Mindstorms in 1998. It was a truly innovative mix of the classic construction kit, with central CPU, servo motors and programming capabilities.

Fast forward to 2006 and the most recent incarnation is Mindstorms Robotic Invention System 2.0 (RIS). It’s great, it’s fantastic and Lego’s PR company doesn’t want us to tell you about it. Why not? Well, there’s a new version coming out called Mindstorms NXT, and very few retailers are still carrying RIS.

OK, so why don’t I tell you all about NXT? Because you won’t be able to buy it until autumn 2006. The bottom line is that there appears to be a strange Mindstorms black hole at present. Having said that, the available information about NXT does suggest that it will be very good.

The heart of Mindstorms has always been the Intelligent Brick, essentially a Lego brick with processing power. The new one for NXT has a 32bit microprocessor.

There are four input ports and three output ports, USB2 and Bluetooth, three interactive servo motors, rotation sensors, an ultrasonic sensor... the list goes on and on.

In software terms, there will be an icon-based drag-and-drop environment for creating programs, and the kit will include ‘18 robot challenges with step-by-step building instructions to acclimate beginners to the process of building and programming robots’.

Sounds like a huge load of fun for a price in the order of $250 (£144 approx).

Also well worth your consideration are Phidgets. As the website says: ‘Phidgets are an easy-to-use set of building blocks for low-cost sensing and control from your PC.

Using the Universal Serial Bus (USB) as the basis for all Phidgets, the complexity is managed behind an easy-to-use and robust Application Programming Interface (API). Applications can be developed quickly in Visual Basic, VBA (Microsoft Access and Excel), Labview, Java, Delphi, C and C++.’

Visit the website and you find a cornucopia of components, documents, programming tips and so on. You can use Phidgets to build robots (and many people do) but they are also adaptable to build almost anything you can think of that can be controlled from a PC.

As an example, one intrepid soul is building a flight simulator for an F15. Sounds tame? This guy has a real F15 cockpit and is using Phidgets to control all the instruments. Is it a robot? Not really, but it is an excellent demonstration of what can be done with Phidgets.

Robot wars
Then there are the serious robots that are being developed by commercial companies. Honda’s Asimo is very impressive. It can walk, talk, run, climb stairs, recognise people’s faces and voices, carry drinks and so on.

Sadly you can’t buy one yet; Asimo is a development project. Interestingly, Sony beat Honda in the race to produce a running robot by demonstrating Qrio in December 2003. It also produced a saleable but expensive product in Aibo the robotic dog.

Sadly Sony has recently shut down its entire robotics division to refocus on its core business such as music, film and entertainment. Product development for Aibo and Qrio has already shut down and production has now ceased.

Killer robot
We may have the technology, but we still don’t know what the first commercially successful robot will look like or what it will do. There have been many flops, such as ‘robotic’ vacuum cleaners and so on. Several companies are desperately trying different designs and models, but none has come up with the definitive answer.

The crucial point here is that we have the technology but lack a clear picture of the desired end result. In computing we would say that what is missing is the ‘killer app’.

In robotics, unsurprisingly, the term ‘killer robot’ has not found favour in marketing circles, but that is what we are talking about. Who knows – you could be just the person the robotics world is looking for.

Education
Having children is a huge bonus if you want to get into robotics – they provide you with the perfect justification for spending the necessary money. You can argue that programming becomes much easier to understand if abstract instructions such as:
Forward 20;
Left 90;
Forward 50;
Right 90;
can immediately be translated into a real, tangible set of movements.

Building a robot together is a huge bonding experience for parent and child. The challenge of problem-solving together, the shared reward of goal achievement...

OK, so we don’t have any evidence for this, but it sounds perfectly plausible and there are excellent robot construction sets that are genuinely aimed at children.

Living in a material world
It is easy to think about advances simply in terms of stronger, lighter, more corrosion-resistant materials. But some recent advances in materials verge on being technological advances as well. Just to give you a flavour, consider muscle wires.

As the name suggests, these are thin strands of metal, specifically a nickel-titanium alloy called Nitinol. This has many properties that are typical of a wire – for example, passing an electrical current through the wire causes it to heat up.

However, Nitinol has an unusual additional property.

At ambient temperature it is easily stretched, but at higher temperatures it forcefully returns to its original shape and length. Combine this with the resistance heating and you can see the reason for the name. You can use these wires to act just like human muscles.

Muscle wire can only pull, not push, but the same is true of organic muscles, so all we have to do is to copy biological design and arrange muscles in antagonistic pairs.

The contraction is small (three to five per cent), but the force is reasonable. In addition, wires come in a variety of thicknesses and can be used in multiples if required.

We’re not trying to tell you that muscle wire is the missing component robot builders have been seeking for years, we’re simply suggesting they are small, light, low-power, long-life, direct linear action motors.

This single innovation makes possible a host of robots (and other devices) that would be impossible otherwise. Now add in the new g-force detectors and the miniature gyro stabilisers, plus a mix of cheap processing power and very cost-effective memory, and you have the potential for some serious fun.

Robot cars
In October 2005, a race was held by Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) for robot vehicles. The 130-mile course included tunnels and man-made obstacles and was laid out in the Mojave Desert, 40 miles south-west of Las Vegas on the Nevada-California border.

The same race had been held in 2004, when all the vehicles had failed to complete the course. In 2005, out of 23 starters, four completed the course. The robots were allowed to use GPS, inertial navigation systems, cameras and lasers to guide themselves.

The winner was a Volkswagen Touareg called Stanley, entered by Stanford University and sponsored by Intel.

Get the bug
Robotics is fun, relatively cheap and very rewarding. It’s very educational and you might just come up with the killer application for the next great phase of robot technology.

So why are you still reading this article? Get onto the web and start building.

Robot resources
Buy Robosapien
Roboraptor
Pleo the robotic dinosaur
Hitec Robotics
Lynx Motion
Robotstore
Phidgets
Lego and Mindstorms NXT
Robosavvy