Day 3 Lecture: Robots

Again a very nice lecture We saw different type of robots and found out about a lot of interesting robot competitions. At one point the proffessor asked us two questions and we’re supposed to answer here. So:

1.) What robot would you create?

We watched some videos about robots on YouTube and we found out BigDog which is the most impressive robot we’ve ever seen.

BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight.

BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

We think that this type of robot is very useful in military purposes. It can help a lot in reducing the number of deaths in wars and not only. So we would like to develop a similar robot.

2.) If you had the necessary money, what robot would you buy?

After playing for a while with Aibo, we all agreed that he would be the perfect pet, so we want to take him home (buy him)