Feature: Build your own robot

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.