PhilBot: Phil Malone's Robot Project place.

Web	www.PhilBot.com

My other sites

OurCoolHouse

Phil's Resume

Web Portfolio

[Home] [Projects] [Hardware] [Software] [Books] [Links] [Downloads]

Welcome to PhilBot.com: my robotics project page.

I'm Phil Malone, your PhilBot webmaster. I've been writing software for about 30 years, and 15 years of that has been for underwater robots. I like robots because they don't just sit on your desk and look at you, they actually do something physical. They swim, crawl, roll or fly. I've personally programmed robots that go down 20,000 feet to the ocean floor to bring back pieces of crashed aircraft and rockets. I worked on a robot that flew like an underwater airplane, towed behind a small boat looking for mines. One robot I worked on crawled like a huge plow on the sea floor burying fiber optic cables between two continents. I've even been on a Titanic Expedition, and watched live video coming up from the ocean floor.

Underwater robots are cool, but they're also incredibly specialized, and really hard to work on (they're always under water when they break down). So I thought it was about time I started playing with their smaller counterparts up on dry land. Eventually I'd like to start a small robotics club at Deep Creek Lake where I live in Garrett County Maryland, so this page is a record of the various things I'm messing around with.

By the way, that's me in the funky picture on the right. You can see my brain giving off strange waves as I try to think of new ways to program my two little mini-sumo bots (Brainer and No-Brainer).

So let's start with the basics. What exactly is a "robot"? Well, the dictionary says:

ro·bot

A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.

Well, that's pretty broad, but it's not surprising. The term robot was first translated to English back in 1923, and it referred to a person in "servitude" or "forced labor". These days we usually think of robots as electro/mechanical devices, but most of them are still in a position of servitude. It's also very true that robots are split between those that are just "Remotely Operated" and those that are capable of "Autonomous" action. Remote Control robots are easier to build, but the future of robotics is in making them smart enough to think for themselves. It's like the difference between setting the timer on a microwave, or just pressing the "popcorn" button. How does it know when to stop?

When it comes to designing and building robots, I think there's three basic reasons that we do it:

To build a device to replace a manual operation that we'd rather not do, or that the robot can do faster, cheaper or more reliably.
eg: Car painting robot, Phone answering machine, Mail sorter, Bread maker, Bottling line, Car wash, Automated Elevator (they used people once:).
To work in a hazardous environment where it's dangerous or impossible for a person to go.
eg: Bomb disposal robot, Fire fighting Robot, Mining Robot, Underwater Robot, Space Robot, Combat Robots.
As an intellectual exercise in creating a thinking machine, or advancing Machine Intelligence.
eg: Soccer & Sumo robots, Auto navigation through image recognition, Conversational machines.

The best way to learn about robots is to build one. It can be big or small, fast or slow, it doesn't matter. For me to get satisfaction out of a project, I need a specific goal, so the goal I started with was to win a competition against another robot. Shows like Battle-Bots and Robot-Wars have made robot fighting exciting, but to me, those robots are just fancy RC Cars. Being a programmer, I much prefer the idea of making a robot smart enough to win it's own battle without my help.

With this in mind I started researching what sorts of "autonomous" robot competitions existed. I found that the most popular competition of this type is Robo-Sumo, which emulates the ancient Japanese tradition of Sumo Wrestling. This competition places two robots on a circular Sumo Ring (or Dohyo), and they fight to push each other out of the ring. Since there are no human operators, the robots require a range of sensors to detect the edge of the ring, and their opponent. They also need a strategy to outwit and out play their opponent. Ah... that's where the programming comes in.

Jump off to my [Projects] page to see where this trail led me.