Entry 02

Date : Monday, 24 October

Time: 8.00 - 12.30 p.m.

Subject: More updating and researching

Little much happened today. I am still in the process of updating the bios of the team members and studying the performances of the robots in last year’s competition, observing the average successes in picking the batons and placing them into the rolling goals. Problems such as inaccurate aiming when dropping the rods into the cans were noted.

This is important as we can foresee the shortcomings of our robot design, and improve it to overcome these problems.

What practical robots are there that have the task of picking up objects? The Roboscooper toy robot picks up little objects with its proportionally large hands and puts them on the cargo rack on its back.

Roboscooper, retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20012482-1.html It seems more designed to gather objects rather than to handle them with great dexterity

and flexibility, as the hands are large and fully extended out to receive the maximum amount of things possible.

Automotive robots in a video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adSYMbPw_oM

These robots are powerful and precise in their motion, being able to place the various parts of the car in the right place. They have high dexterity and flexible, being able to rotate to turn the parts in different angles. This is why they are so successful in manufacturing cars.

Kuka in RoboCup 2010 Singapore, in a video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiWAe7T2KHk&feature=related This tiny robot prototype can pick a small object and place it in a person’s hands. The robot is able t

o sense the position hands and knows that it needs to orient its arm there and release the object. It appears to be a miniature version of the industry robots that work in the car manufacturing factories.

The Honda robots were designed mainly to walk like humans. As can be seen from the picture, the arms and hands were only added in the 8th robot out of the 11. So in this case, the propulsion of the robot was the main focus of design rather than the handling of objects. Nevertheless, today’s Asimo robot is able to grab various objects with great dexterity and care, and efficiently deliver it to the designated place.