Description:

In this class, students will participate in a small (8-12 person) robotics team that will design, manufacture, and program a 300-pound autonomous robot with the guidance of the instructor as a project manager. The robot will be a snack (and/or drink) vending machine that autonomously travels around Artisan's Asylum while playing "The Entertainer" every hour on the hour, stopping for pedestrian traffic and following a set path. Class time will be a combination of lectures and design exercises, with students voting on particular design elements and working together to come up with solutions to standard mechanical, electrical, and computational engineering problems common to the robotics field. Towards the end of the series, students will be expected to attend build days that will take place outside of class time. All students will become generally familiar with the robot design, fabrication and programming process, and students will choose a specialty to focus on later in the class that they will use to help build the final robot.

Class Goals:

The goal of this class will be for each student to know generally how robots are designed and built in a practical, hands-on sense, and specifically how one area of specialization (whether it's mechanical, electrical, or computational design) is fully implemented on a large mobile robot. By the end of the class, students will have constructed a large, autonomous robot that will remain at Artisan's Asylum as the first of many 'house robots'.

Prerequisites:

No previous design or engineering experience is necessary. If students expect to help fabricate the mechanical structure or electrical infrastructure of the robot later on in the class, they must have previous or concurrent instruction in welding, machining or electronics assembly, as appropriate to their specialty. Artisan's Asylum Tool Training sessions count as sufficient instruction, though Introduction to TIG Welding and Precision Machining classes are preferred.

Materials:

All materials will be provided by Artisan's Asylum.

Instructor Biography:

Gui Cavalcanti received a General Engineering degree with a Robotics concentration from the Olin College of Engineering. He worked as a robotics engineer at Boston Dynamics, working on cutting edge mechanical design and systems integration for highly dynamic legged robots like BigDog, AlphaDog, and PETMAN. Over the course of his career he has developed the mechanical systems for a robotic tuna, several robotic snakes, an ornithopter, and several other robotic animals. In his spare time he builds ridiculous things with ridiculous people, like a flotilla of SUV-sized rubber duck boats to take on the water on the 4th of July.