Bridge Program and National Mentoring Community Conference
Volume 63, Number 14
Friday–Sunday, November 16–18, 2018;
Google HQ and Stanford University, CA
Session PS1: Undergraduate Poster Session (11:00AM - 12:30PM)
11:00 AM,
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Room: Tressider Oak Lounge
Abstract: PS1.00002 : Robotics with Humanoid Robot NAO and Hexapod (Robotic Spider)*
Preview Abstract
Abstract
Authors:
Carlos Galindo
(Bellarmine University)
Muhammad Saleem
(Bellarmine University)
Akhtar Mahmood
(Bellarmine University)
Robotics is an exciting field. Various types of robotics devices are being
used in many sectors of the industry, in NASA's Mars missions, hospitals and
movies, among others. Since robotics technology has witnessed a remarkable
growth, there is a need to educate the next-generation undergraduate STEM
students in robotics. We have been conducting research in fully-autonomous
robotics with our Humanoid-Robot NAO and in semi-autonomous robotics with
Hexapod in our Robotics Lab. We have programmed a humanoid robot, called NAO
that has the ability to detect the surroundings and can hear, communicate,
carry out conversations with humans and can even sense/detect being touched.
We have programmed NAO in Python to become fully-autonomous. NAO has 25
degrees of freedom and has multiple touch sensors, and hence is able to
carry out specific tasks in the lab and can work alongside with students.
NAO is controlled by a specialized Linux-based Operating System, called
NAOqi, which allows NAO to interpret and understand data received by its
sensors. NAOqi powers the robot's hardware, which includes four microphones
(for voice recognition and sound localization), two speakers (for
multilingual text-to-speech synthesis) and two HD cameras (for vision,
including facial and shape recognition).
Natural and human-created disasters often leave search-and-rescue missions
reliant on human efforts in dangerous scenarios. We have experimented with
applying semi-autonomous functionality by building a Hexapod robot using a
PlayStation-2 controller that can be used to aid human operators in
search-and-rescue operations. Using this controller, we are able to
investigate the movements of the hexapod and understand its physical
capabilities, which is necessary to determine whether a hexapod could
function in diverse environments. We will highlight the advantages of
implementing semi-autonomous human-operated robotics
*Department of Physics, Bellarmine University