1. Robot Architecture “Lyly Autonomous Robot and My Previous Attempts at Robot Construction” June 28, 2007 Scott Settembre University at Buffalo, SNePS Research Group ss424@cse.buffalo.edu

2. My First Robot - 1986 • Computer controlled Turtle robot • Constructed out of wood, hobby parts, and solid state components • Wired by cartridge port to Radio Shack Color Computer • During first presentation, MOSFETS got fried • Learned: Hardware is expensive

3. My First Collaboration Robot - 1990 • Micro Mouse - maze competition • Utilized 6809E processor • Hardware custom designed by other students • I designed a virtual environment to simulate and test hardware drivers and maze search and solve code because of continual hardware issues • Learned: Hardware design and test is a major time sink

4. My First Robot Hack - 1995 • Decided to hack RC cars • Cheaper and most of the hardware design is already been done • Control by computer through serial port to remote controller • No feedback between RC car and computer • Learned: RC vehicles move faster than remote computer can turn them away from a door frame…

5. My First Autonomous Robot – July 4, 1997 • Ordered a Basic STAMP kit robot and decided to assemble it during the Mars Pathfinder landing in honor of the Sojourner Rover • Watched live NASA feeds in FOX News cold room while assembling • Luckily it took NASA over a day to get it off the landing pad, since it took that long to build a simple kit • Programmed using Stamp Basic and program is downloaded to robot through parallel port • Learned: Small robots are easy to program, slow to test, not very powerful at all

6. My First Robot Architecture Realizations… • LARGE commitment of time to • Build… there is always another screw to get, resistor to buy, wire to run • Test… check schematics, remove and reinstall boards and reconnect wires, and always guessing is involved • Debug… programs need to download to robot, then get robot to state you want to test, then test. Debug cycle way too long…

7. My First “Virtual” Autonomous Robot • Decided the best way to design robots was to simulate them in a virtual environment • I used DirectX to model a world to get the sensor data I needed to feed a robot • I selected a few visual features and applied an ANN to train object avoidance behavior • Worked! • Internal monologue: “Yay! Now I have a good way to program a robot!” And so…

8. “LyLy” - ROV and Autonomous Robot • Designed a robot in a CAD • Built it out of wood, RoboteQ motor controller, wheelchair motors, golf cart batteries, and laptop. • Two modes: • ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) mode • Uses WiFi, transmits visual and audio to the control computer • Control computer can transmit back to robot • With laptop on top, and open, we have a remote person! • Autonomous mode • Does not require WiFi, though with WiFi it has access to the LyLy server which can do more extensive decision making and data storage

9. “LyLy” - Autonomous Mode • Internal laptop collects visual and audio data • Processes images, makes instinctive turn and stop decisions • Processes audio, for voice recognition • Implements reflex/instincts, all hard-coded • Has backup “personality” and logic as a failsafe • Forwards processed information to external “brain” • External processing • Relieves processing needing to be done on robot laptop • Quicker and more stable connection • Cheaper cost, faster execution