Category: Intro to Robotics

“It’s coming home!! It’s coming home!!  At twelve noon, it’s coming home!!”  Monsieur Marcel, the director of Spiralium: the world’s most advanced company manufacturing dazzling flying machines, fervently walked through the lobby of his office down to his subordinates making an announcement. The subordinates sprung out of their futuristic affinity chairs as all of them proclaimed in unison, “The fate of the planet we shall know, no one knows how far we’ll go”. 

It was the year 3000; Spiralium was a sheer glass building which had a 100 human employees and 200 robotic employees. The company was founded by Monsieur Marcel who’d spent fifty years of his life on Planet Earth working day and night to make futuristic machines that would aid mankind. For the past few years, he’d been working on a special project that was going to pay off today, on 27 September 3000. He’d heard, when he was a little boy, that Marobots (citizens of Planet Mars) live 50 years ahead of Planet Earth time. In that sense, Marobots always knew what was coming; that is, they’d foreseen the current apocalyptic state of our Planet way ahead of time. The only reason why Planet Earthers weren’t warned about this was because there was no communication system in place. Monsieur Marcel was the first to invent a machine that would allow humans to communicate with Marobots. However, the only limitation the system had was that it took one year to deliver a message to either side. In 2999, he’d requested for a report on what Earth looked like in the future. And today, one year later, he has received a reply saying that he should be anticipating a package from Supreme Marobot who will answer his query.

Monsieur Marcel and all his subordinates knew that today their year-long quest was going to come to an end. Today, they were going to learn about what Planet Earth was going to look like in 3050. This would allow him and his team to set new missions for Spiralium, missions that would prevent further destruction to Planet Earth and perhaps build a brighter future. They couldn’t help but anticipate what was going to come- Was their Planet going to cease to exist because of Global Warming? Would have had all wild animals under the category of “Least concern” on the Red list of threatened species already become extinct? Would have human civilization been completely crumbled because of unforeseen circumstances? Was it really going to be the end of life on Earth?!

Once again, all subordinates spoke in unison, “Only a few more minutes to noon, we’re all going to find out soon.”

****

“It’s here”, announced Monsieur Marcel as he received the parcel. It was a small 1 m³ metallic box that weighed 10 kgs, with unrecognizable characters carved on it. All the human and robotic employees surrounded him in a circle, eagerly waiting for him to press the small button on the box to see what happens. There were so many thoughts running through his head. What if they found out what was going to happen 50 years from now but there was no way they could prevent it?

An inevitable apocalypse.

He suddenly broke out of his stream of thoughts and glared at the object in front of him. Very impatiently, he pressed the small grey button on the box, causing it to snap open from all sides. A small 3-legged creature walked out:

It made its way to a nearby raised platform, rotated 360 degrees on one leg as though it was scanning the whole room and then suddenly went off. Exactly five seconds later, Monsieur Marcel and his subordinates gasped. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The creature had produced a hologram in the air which showed Planet Earth in the year 3050. Marobots were seen walking around our Planet Earth carrying out daily human tasks, except for the fact that there were no humans in the scene. All operations that functioned in the scene were automated. There were large spider machines transporting equipment and drones flying high to keep a check on them. Abruptly, Supreme Marobot appeared on the hologram and gave his audience a wicked smile. The hologram ended and the 3-legged creature blazed in flames. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, everyone was shocked.

How were Monsieur Marcel and his subordinates to protect year 3050’s Planet Earth from an invasion by the Marobots themselves?

Interstellar (2014): TARS replaced by my cardboard mini-bot

Scene from the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7OVqXm7_Pk

Cooper, Doyle, Brand, and TARS board Ranger 1, preparing for their journey to Miller’s Planet. The purpose of their mission is to gather data from the last crew that embarked to Miller’s Planet, which never returned. Romilly, who volunteers to stay onboard on the main ship during their mission, explains the planet’s geography to the crew: 

“Miller is a waterworld, covered in a seemingly endless, shallow ocean. The planet’s gravity is described to be “punishing” at 130% of Earth’s, forcing human astronauts to move slowly and with some difficulty while on its surface. Time on the surface of Miller’s planet passes very slowly relative to the time experienced by myself and that experienced on Earth. I’ve calculated that a single hour on Miller would equate to seven years back on Earth. Because of the planet’s proximity to Gargantua, the immense gravity of the black hole causes the planet to be roiled by massive tidal waves as tall as 4,000 feet.” 

With this knowledge at hand, the crew departs from the main ship to start their mission. They descend into Miller’s atmosphere, searching for remains of the last crew. Due to the slow nature of time on Miller’s planet, the first crew had only recently landed, even though years have passed since there departure from Earth. Shortly upon entry, Cooper is able to gather an approximate location of the remains of the first crew through a signaling beacon. They quickly land in the corresponding area of the planet, however, they must search through a large perimeter in order to pinpoint the exact location of the beacon. Brand exits the aircraft and began treading away from the ship, scanning for any clue of remains. She eventually sees a promising piece of debris in the distance and sets off to investigate. As she approaches the target, Cooper notices a massive navy blue wall growing in the distance. Immediately, Cooper screams at Brand, telling her to return to the ship as soon as possible, as this navy colored wall was actually the massive tidal wave Romiley warned them about. Determined to not come back empty-handed, Brand attempts to carry the debris, however, it’s merely impossible due to the weight. Thankfully, she had the TAR device (my mini robot) in hand, which was able to navigate through the narrow cracks of the tarnished metal and retrieve the small valuable components. Thanks to its slick brass wire legs,  TAR was able to shimmy its way in efficiently and quickly. TAR returned the surface with the data, in which Brand collected and sprinted towards the ship, avoiding the massive tidal wave with only seconds to spare. 

source:

https://interstellarfilm.fandom.com/wiki/Miller_(planet) 

Lab Template 1: BEAM inspired robots

Description

Through this guide, we will get familiar with parameters and instruments to understand basic analog circuits and tools to work with electromechanical components. 

From the set of experiments described below, This will help us establish the connection between the electrical current and magnetic field. 

Goal

By the end of these experiments, students are expected to submit evidence of the process be able to reproduce experiments that use power supplies, multimeters and tools to work with copper wire. At the same time, we will acquire a working knowledge of concepts of electricity as Joule’s effect or Ohm’s law.

Outline

Experiment 1: Calculations 2

Experiment 2: A moving circuit 2

Experiment 3: Iterate 2

Experiment 4: Build a light sensor 2

Experiment 5: Design and build a mini-robot 3

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Experiment 1: Calculations

Using a multimeter, measure resistance and voltage with one battery and one motor. With Ohm’s law, calculate the current in the circuit. 

Utilizing a multimeter or using indirect measurement, read the real current in the circuit. Read also the voltage applied to the circuit.

Draw an equivalent circuit to your battery-motor circuit. Explain in your own words what makes theoretical and real currents different.

Using this information, calculate the duration that the battery capacity will allow the motor to run in real conditions.

Battery: CR2032 (Datasheet)

Voltage: 3.05 V

Resistance: 6.5 ohm 

Ohms Law: 3/6 = 0.5A

Multimeter Current:10.3 mA

Theoretical Current VS Actual Current:

Theoretical current displays the mathematical interpretation of the circuit, which is great for approximations and predictions. However, it cannot account for certain factors such as additional sources of resistance, which could appear in a variety of ways.  Poorly connected leads, wire composition, and other components could contribute to effecting the current; Therefore, measuring the actual current with a multimeter allows for more of a precise reading of the circuit. 

Battery Duration:

According to the actual current, if it is drawing 10.3 mA, the duration of the battery should be roughly 19 hours. Whereas, if the motor is drawing 500 mA, the duration will be around 25 minutes.

Experiment 2: A moving circuit

Using a soldering iron, pliers, wire cutters and other tools, make a small prototype that has:

• switch
• battery
• motor

Document the process of this small creation, the materials and processes you went through and any information that other roboticists might need to replicate your experiment. 

Material list:

• 1 CR2032 Battery
• Battery Casing
• Mini Switch
• Mini circular vibrating motor
• Wires
• Cardboard
• Brass Wire

I began constructing my circuit with solely a battery, battery casing, a single motor, and a switch. As minimalistic as it was, it assisted in visualizing the different directions I could move towards with the materials at hand. I soldered the wires together as necessary, creating a simple circuit between the battery, switch, and motor. My next step was constructing some sort of body that would allow these components to stay in place.  I could tell that the power provided by the motor was minimal, so I opted to use cardboard as the framework for the device due to its lightweight nature. I continued to attach the components to a small 3x3in of cardboard, leaving the battery and switch visible and the motors and wires pressed behind another 3x3in of cardboard. The result was a cardboard sandwich-like robot, however, it lacked any significant movement. To combat this, I cut a 4in piece of brass wire evenly into 4 pieces and glued them to the bottom of the cardboard, giving the device mini legs and eliminating the cardboard friction. By decreasing the surface friction, the robot moved at a significantly greater pace but lacked movement in any particular direction. 

Experiment 3: Iterate

Create a table with at least three different iterations of the robotic structure. You can try with different locomotion methods. Test them under different conditions you think useful for it, such as weight it can curry or different surfaces. Make sure your table include annotations for future analysis. 

Iterations	Results
Wooden Table Testing	https://drive.google.com/file/d/10TcJjjNVbieOUGhXxez9VLXVCTbnfBan/view?usp=sharing As shown in the video above, the robot had difficulty moving while on the wooden table surface. I believe that the grooves in the wood prohibited the robot for moving at its full potential.
IMA Floor Testing	https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Rm5xNdzACC7DV2RCIvyUu43J_2SdD99/view?usp=sharing As shown in this video, the robot functioned best when test on the IMA floor.  The smooth surface allowed for the robot to maneuver in random directions at a semi-constant speed.
Change of Surface Contact: Brass to Plastic	During the testing face, I decided to add a tad bit of glue to the end of each leg, as I was curious whether it would improve or worsen the mobility of the robot. I contemplated that maybe the brass endings were puncturing the surface too much, however, I discovered that the robot’s functionality was dampened with the glue.  I shortly realized that the glue increased the surface friction, in hence slowing down the speed of the robot.

Experiment 4: Build a light sensor

Use a Light Dependent Resistor to build a circuit that gets activated by the presence (or absence) of light. Hand-draw your circuit and annotate the behavior. 

As a help for this step, you might need to do a bit of research on LDR circuits. It might be handy to use http://www.ermicro.com/blog/?p=1097 as a reference.

 

As shown in the photo of the breadboard and circuit diagram above, the electricity traveled from the battery source to the transistor, and if the LDR value was high enough (which depends on the amount of light it receives), the transistor would then release enough current to spin the motor and complete the circuit.

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Experiment 5: Design and build a mini-robot (Postponed)