Students do the Robot

In one of the workshops running at today's Infinity Festival, at West Lakes Academy, was Robotics and how they are being used and designed for the future. Ran by two local engineers, they brought in four types of robots to show the students participating in the workshop. The smallest were small, flat robots. When switched on, they started to move around the table, avoiding bumping into anything by changing direction before crashing into something. One of the designers explained to us that the machine uses infrared sensors, invisible to the human eye to detect when it was going to hit something, which made the programming change the direction of the bot. They scuttled along the tables exemplifying how they avoid obstacles as the students placed pieces of paper and objects in their path.

The second robot introduced was designed by the designers presenting to the intrigued audience. It resembled the Mars Rover; with its impressive size, the large machine took over most of the table it was on. This robot can go in any direction due to the unique tires that it has been fitted with. The designer demonstrated how the head can fold down, and the entire body can rotate into a long cylinder. The engineers explained to the students who were in awe, that this robot had been specifically designed for Sellafield to use. The decommissioned buildings pose a risk to humans, therefore the machine is sent. On its head it uses lasers to construct a 3D map of the interior, which is sent on a live feed to the operators.

This next strange bot is a future map maker, similar to the first. It is driven around the room by simple controls given by the students which used the same laser technology to create a 3D map which can then be used to do in many areas: decommissioned buildings, military work, police work. The possibility are endless.

The last and easily the most interesting robot of the four was a robot called NAO, who had a charming quality to it. The computer controlled machine was immediately the star of the show, with his face tracking technology and voice recognition software. He just couldn't help showing the students his guitar playing and dancing.